nissan sentra 2000: annoying air conditioning feature

Hi,

I recently bought a used 2000 sentra and am fairly pleased with it. There is a feature that this car has that's really annoying that I'd like to disable if possible?

When I select venting for the front window on the HVAC selector dial I notice that my air conditioning goes on. In general, I am not a huge fan of using air-conditioning and don't really need it all that often, seeing as how I live in the mostly chilly northeast U.S. I can understand, I suppose, why the designers might have hard-wired this into the system but I don't understand why they don't leave it up to the driver whether or not A/C is required for defogging the front window. Often times, just applying some heated air takes care of fogging problems. In extreme cases I have in the past, in other vehicles, switched on the A/C to clear things up quicker.

The biggest reason why this feature is annoying is because when the A/C is turned on, I notice a reduced performance in the vehicle, which is my experience with all other cars. The car lags a little, presumably because more juice needs to be applied to conditioning air. I'd much rather apply this extra juice to the engine than to my front window.

Has anyone else observed this feature or is this an anomaly and a bug in my system? Is it possible to disable this feature?

Thanks, bb

Reply to
bleakbeak
Loading thread data ...

No - it's the way ALL A/C front defrost systems have been designed for the past 30 years. You see, using the A/C dramatically reduces the humidity in the air. That in turn makes the defrost/defog process about 1000x quicker than not using it... In short, you want to have this to clear the window quicker.

I have an '86 Mustang with dealer (or aftermarket) air. It never ran the AC with the defrost on. On a good rainy day, the windows never really defogged unless you put the AC on. Then it was all clear in 5 mins..... Today's cars will clear the windshield in no time with the AC on in Defrost.

Leave it alone - it's doing what it was designed to do. If it bothers you that much, just punch it - all AC systems cut out at WOT for max. performance!

Reply to
SneakerFreak

The control dial has a position halfway between the floor+window and (the preceeding setting) where there is some air going to the window, but the a/c switch hasn't been tripped. I leave it there often.

Why didn't they leave the control up to us? It would have saved them putting in an additional switch. I think maybe the a/c compressor has a low setting for defog. Or, they built the car for the lowest common denominator... for the many people who don't have a clue how it all works...

Reply to
<nospam

Both of my Altimas (94 and 99) do this, but I find it doesn't suck as much power when running in defrost as it does when the regular AC is switched on -- in the defrost mode it's hardly noticeable.

Reply to
JM

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.