Boiling water onto cold windscreen?

Chris Whelan ( snipped-for-privacy@prejudicentlworld.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

I may be thinking km not miles... I'm hardly Mr. Fit - I used to fast-jog at 12 and move from a walk to a running gait at about 8

- if that was km/h, then that's 5mph.

But 1/4mile in 15min is definitely BLOODY slow...

And there's the advantage that it doesn't smell, doesn't get on your fingers, doesn't rot door seals, and doesn't leave a residue.

Cracked a screen doing this

Fan heater is best

Omegas do it as well!

And Omegas - so must be

Well, no bad has come of it.

Why, thank you for your permission.

Why do so many people advise that you use warm water instead of boiling then? Pouring boiling water on frozen up windscreens, clearly doesn't create visible cracks, in this country at least, with the temperatures that we get down to, and it clears the windscreen faster.

Is it one of those jokes played on the masses to watch them struggle?

Alex.

It's one of those items of recieved wisdom. Older glass technology wasn't up to much.

However, I'm in no mood to test it, having seen enough cars with cracked windscreens and exploded rear screens.

Richard

The message from "Alex, Boosbeck." contains these words:

Well, I advise using hot but not boiling water because of the slim chance of cracking your screen, but mainly because you're less likely to scald yourself!

The message from RichardK contains these words:

Oooh, I remember our old Morris 2200 rear screen going overnight in a locked garage. No sign of impact - just bulging outwards in the morning.

Assuming I'm expecting frost, I squirt de-icer in the screen the evening before and spread it about with a "squeegee". Either ice doesn't then form or, if it does, it doesn't stick to the screen.

Brian

Best way IMHO is leave the car ticking over in the drive until it defrosts. This does assume you have a house with a driveway though, and don't live anywhere near opportunistic chavs. My last car had 340,000 on the clock, so I don't think it causes unnessessary wear either. It works for me, but I dare say it wouldn't work for everyone.

-- Stuart

Put a squirt of dishwasher rinse aid in the water and it just beads off the windscreen rather than re-freezing.

sponix

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember snipped-for-privacy@email.com (sPoNiX) saying something like:

Makes the tea taste funny afterwards, though.

Grimly Curmudgeon wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Exactly. Never fancied putting rinse aid in my kettle either, that's why I prefer to wipe the water off with an old wiper blade.

A modern windscreen is laminated glass not toughened. In other words, it's two sheets of glass laminated with a plastic sheet between them. If it breaks, it holds in place. Side windows however are toughened. This fractures into small granules when it's broken. Toughened glass is actually produced by heat treatment

Del

If you are a frost-ologist then can you explain why the forst on a car's side windows always seems less thick then that in the windscreen, irresepctive of which way the car is facing when you get to it in the morning?

Did I understand that right? You cracked a screen by leaving the heaters on to defrost the windscreen?

I suspect this might crack the screen too, surely?

Maybe where you poured the ater and at what rate were important.

Did you pour in onto the top of the screen or did you pour it all over top-middle-bottom?

And did you pour it quickly and deliver a lot of heat to the screen at once or was it more of a slow thing?