Winter driving advice needed

[Johnny C]

It's getting to the time of year when they salt the motorways where I live. A rough sketch of my drive in the morning, about 5 mins on an A road then 30 miles of motorway. The car is left parked on a driveway (no garage) and there's a field opposite so we get cold winds blasting across and even with the windscreen pointing away it gets very iced up sometimes.

The problem is, when I go out in the morning, the windscreen squirters are frozen. Not just the jets, the tube. I always defrost the windows with hand-warm water and save a bit to de-ice the jets as much as possible. I make my own de-icer with meths and it's better than the Halfords-type stuff, but still not good enough. On a bad day it can take 20 mins to deice whatever bit of the system is frozen.

Unfortunately that's 15 mins of motorway. The windscreen soon gets spattered with salty mud, and I'm driving into the rising sun (reverse kamikazi though that sounds more like a sexual position). So it gets to the stage where I can barely see, the windscreen turns into a white screen.

The problem is worsened because if I try the squirter, and it's still iced, the wipers just smear the crud more evenly which makes it worse.

I can get around it if I have a bottle of water, open the sunroof and tip the bottle onto the windscreen but that only works below 70 - above that and most of the water comes back in - being soaked when there's already -5C wind blasting rounD the car through the sunroof isn't fun

So, has anyone got any tips?

 

[sailor]

Heated car cover?

JohnC
993turbo

 

[Mark Elder]

What about just increasing the concentration of meths? The less water the lower the freezing temperature of the liquid.

I guess you already know the nozzels are heated when you switch on the rear screen demist? - not much help if the problem is well down in the tubes.

Another idea: cable tie a lamp/lamp fitting (like the one used for the under bonnet lamp) to each of the tubes in the area they frost up and wire up to the under bonnet lamp. I say this because I have noticed, these frosting mornings, that the under bonnet lamp comes on when you open car doors (not only when you open bonnet) - how have I worked this out? Because a 3 inch circular area of the bonnet immediate above the lamp defrosts itself while I have the driver's door open in the morning as I scrape the windowscreen. If that lamp heat can defrost through the bonnet, it can surely defrost your tubes too.

 

[matthewb]

I do the same as you with a slight mod - I fill a sports-drink bottle (the ones with a nozzle that produce a jet), poke my arm out of the driver's window and squeeze hard, aiming at the bottom of the screen. Even at speed this works well, although I make sure no one else is near. Alternatively, drive behind something kicking up a lot of spray, e.g. a lorry, assuming this won't just make matters worse.

 

[Johnny C]

Good idea about wiring something to the underbonnet lamp, I'll check if it's in the bonnet area it freezes and investigate that option if so; might sound daft but maybe a fish-tank heater would do the trick. I'd guess that the hot air tubes go near enough in the body and the air heats up quick enough so it's in the bonnet area, but I'll have to have a play one cold morning. Maybe a slosh of hot water on the bonnet where the pipes go might speed things up - I always defrost with warm to hand-hot water anyway, it's quicker than deicer spray and a couple of sloshes 10 secs apart heats the window up enough to demist it inside.

 

[944s2]

Down side of engine in wrong place(sorry guys couldn't resist it) but an extension to washer feed wrapped round heater hose or similar heats water in washers wonderfully

 

[Steve Brookes]

ORIGINAL: matthewb

I do the same as you with a slight mod - I fill a sports-drink bottle (the ones with a nozzle that produce a jet), poke my arm out of the driver's window and squeeze hard, aiming at the bottom of the screen. Even at speed this works well, although I make sure no one else is near. Alternatively, drive behind something kicking up a lot of spray, e.g. a lorry, assuming this won't just make matters worse.

I do the same but use a trigger spray bottle with diluted screen wash that I have at the ready when I come to a stop at traffic lights or I'll pull off at junction and spray while stopped on the hard shoulder.

I also increase the mix of screenwash to water to 1:2 at this time of year.