Do any cars not mist up inside in winter?

Also sprach snipped-for-privacy@aol.comNoEmails (Dave Baker):-

In my experience, once you've sorted any leaks and damp carpets etc, the primary cause of condensation is moisture from your body. Particularly noticeable on the rare occasions I've got straight into a cold car from a shower.

I had this problem (misting up) with an otherwise perfectly sound and middling mileage (~50,000) Honda Accord. Eventually against all the advice here and elsewhere, I put Bars Leaks into the coolant. Magic - problem gone. Guess it was a small leak in the heater matrix, but I didn't get the characteristic smell. It's a difficult one. It's normal for some misting up given the right weather etc., but it shouldn't be necessary to have to run the a/c all the time just to keep the windows clear!

I had this issue with misting and body moisture. Easily soved in my case , I got married :-))

Brrrrrrr- You should try wearing clothes ;-p

Graham

[snip]

I can't remember one. I've just got back from a trip in my apparently leak free Saab 9-3. It took 40 minutes for the back screen to clear completely. To make it extra annoying, the heated rear screen times out after a few minutes, so I had to turn it back on loads of bloody times. If anyone ever meets the moron that thought up that little gem, could you punch them in the face for me?

Cheers,

Colin.

My wife's car is fine, mind you it is a climate controlled Lexus. Get one, secondhand they go for peanuts and work wonderfully for years and years.

mrcheerful

I take my car to work every other week and leave a fan heater on for a few hours on a very low setting with the window slightly open. Never mists up now. I only do it Sept to April.

The heated rear screen switches off after 10 minutes on my Volvo, but if you hold the button down for a second instead of just pressing it momentarily, it beeps and puts it into 'on permanently' mode. I don't know if you Saab has a similar feature, but it might be worth a try.

Ben.

Colin Stamp ( snipped-for-privacy@stamp.plus.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Sounds like an **extraordinarily** long time. Even without the HRW (which would have cleared it off quickly enough), I'd have expected the heating to have got it clear well within that time.

You didn't have the heating set to recirc or the fan off or something, did you?

Got aircon? Turn it on. That'll have the lot clear in seconds.

Is the boot carpet soaking? It was a fairly damp day on Friday, you may have noticed. Wet dog in the boot?

There's a lot of things car designers deserve that for, but this isn't one.

I don't remember seeing anything about that in the manual, but it sounds worth a go.

Cheers,

Colin.

It is indeed. I've never known a car like it. It seems to be a particularly weedy rear window heater rather than bad misting. Most of the time it doesn't matter because you can use aircon to clear it.

Nope. The climate control was on automatic and it had picked sensible settings for everything, including turning on the HRW - until it timed out for the first time...

It was 0 celsius outside. Aircon would make absolutely no difference at all. It won't even run.

I haven't checked it today, but it's never been damp in the past and the rear window heater has always been pretty useless.

I wouldn't mind if, as with previous cars I've had, it cleared the screen before timing out. I'd even forgive having to re-select it once. This one is completely ridiculous though.

Cheers,

Colin.

Yes. No idea why though. Actually it misted up yesterday but I had vaxed the seats & carpets so I'm not sure that's relevant.

9 times out of 10 I'm straight out of the shower whenever I get in a car, so it does tend to mist up straight away, but the A/C usually clears that within a few seconds.. or doesn't even get started if I think about it quick enough.

Trouble is the A/C doesn't run in cold weather so sometimes I have to run the engine a bit to get the thing started so I can dimist and drive off.

In the shower?

this problem (misting up) with an otherwise perfectly sound and

That's interesting... My 406 has done this since almost new. It's only a problem in winter months - it starts to happen as the out side temp falls to 5deg and even the aircon can't clear it completely. Also under the right conditions, when it has been parked for a while 2 oval patches of condensation appear over the screen outlets. Oh yes, and it needs a pint of water in the cooling system every 3 months. Maybe I'll try it

Peter

I use a small container of dehunidifire crystals for £3 from Wilkos - soaks up the moisture and then empty it out periodically.

Wash & Go !

Graham

Also sprach "Graham" :-

Or, in the case of most teenagers - Go and Wash!

I found the impact that one the other day when playing "Daddy Cab" for my daughter and 3 of her mates to the flix (in the Rover 218SD)

I couldn't seem to get the windows clear .. I was actually passing round a window cloth for them to wipe the water off (and to stop them writing on the glass).

On the way back I checked the heater and it was set to 'recirc' .. slid it over to 'through vent' and the windows cleared within mins ;-)

I checked again when I picked them all up and it was still fine.

What is strange is the various amounts of non fan assisted 'venting' different cars have. The Rover has to have the fan on 1 for any venting effect whereas the old Sierra (rest is's block) would vent well with the fan on '0'.

The Ranger (MKII Escort based kit) has the std MKII heater fan with the (now) dry fan bearings .. this means driving with the window open a touch till it all warms up as there seems to be quite a bit of natural air flow without the fan (I'll do a heater refurb when I put the 2L lump in).

All the best ..

T i m