Wind shield deicing

[oil pan 4]

I have the 5,500 watt, 19,000btu/hr coolant heater and have been doing the space heater in the car trick since 1999. This will be for when I can not use it.

Just running a line of coolant to the wind shield washer reservoir is the easiest cheapest idea in concept.

But there is a few problems with that.
1 you could make the washer fluid so hot it cracks the glass on contact.
2 the boiling point of methanol is around 120'F, so there goes all your methanol in very short time period.

I picked up something that was actually built to do this because:
It heats the water up to 140'F and turns off.
It appears to hold about 1 cup of water.
I can turn it on and off as needed.

I don't have to use alcohol. I could use a polypropylene mix, which is used in air craft deicing.

Originally Posted by SDMCF

I use a grill block but no longer bother with a blanket because in my use I rarely park the car for short enough periods for it to make much difference to engine cooling whilst parked. Do you think it is worth trying again and checking for faster warmup for a cold engine?

When I lived in northern japan I timed it. On a icy morning I could get warm air to start blowing from the vents 3 to 5 minutes sooner when slowly driving.
In Maine, which is next to Canada, when there would be a high of 10'F (something like -20'C) the engine would never get up to operating temperature with out a grill block if I took the car out on the highway.

[oil pan 4]

It has 8 gauge wires not 10 gauge like I originally thought.

The internal volume is likely about a half cup. It draws 27 amps while its warming up. It takes maybe a minute to warm up.

This picture shows the and the heater heating up.


This picture show the vent mounted nozzles I added (OE pulled from my old blue diesel).


This picture shows the wiper mounted nozzle.

[oil pan 4]

Ice storm battle test.
There is between 1 and 2 mm of ice on the wind shield in this thermal graph.
In the control picture you see the windshield wipers up and the wind shield a cool 26'F.


Then in the second flir image the wind shield washer only warmed the glass to about 40'F, making the ice gone.
No cracked wind shield and I got a port hole much bigger and much quicker than I expected.

[jakobnev]

I put warm water bottles on my dash.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

What about blowing some hot air in the windshield, in a similar approach to what is done in the anti-ice system fitted to the leading edge of aircraft wings?

[oil pan 4]

This goes from ice to no nice in about 30 seconds.
I have a wind shield defroster vent but it takes a while to warm up.

[redpoint5]

I'm going to start covering the windshield with cardboard when I park at work during my night shift. I can't be bothered to scrape ice in the morning when I get off, and someday I'll get pulled over for driving Ace Ventura style.

[oil pan 4]

That gets real old real fast when its 0'F.

Tonight there was so much freezing rain if I had put card board or a towel over the glass I would have had a towel frozen to the wind shield or had a left over card board stuck all over the glass.

[Frank Lee]

Coroplast?

[oil pan 4]

With all the freezing rain it would still get under plastic.
Then with wind gusts to 20mph or so it may not even still be there after a few hours.

We have freezing and icing conditions just about all the way to mexico.
So much for man made global warming "soon making snowy winters a thing of the past", I was looking forward to that.