NA - Defogging car windows (Exterior) What's the secret?

SixPapaCharlie

SixPapaCharlie

May the force be with you
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First Officer 6PC
What is the secret to preventing fog on the outside of your windshield? With temps dropping and the kids' cars live outside over night, The windows fog up.
Wipe it off, and it comes right back. Once the car is warm, the defroster will fix it but nobody is sitting in the driveway for 15 minutes and waiting for this.
I tried a few different glass cleaners. That didn't solve the problem. Both kids drive on a busy road into the morning sun. This is not safe. Is there a product I can apply that will prevent this?

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Heat is pretty much the only solution…. Until the window is warm enough to not cause condensation, it will form.
 
And don’t forget to tell them about walking to school barefoot through chest-deep snow, uphill both ways!
 
No remote starts?
wonder if rainx would help?
I inherited like 10 bottles of it from my FIL.
I don’t think I have ever tried it.
 
Gary Ward said:
No remote starts?
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I actually removed the remote start because I kept hitting it when the keys were in my pocket. I would come out from a restaurant and the car would be running.
Happened all the time.
 
Darn.
I was hoping there was a chemical. Rain X is great for removing water. I hoped Fog X would do the same for fog but Fog X may as well just be more fog in a bottle. Does nothing.
 
On an outside car, especially in sun blazing hot Texas, wiper blades will be good for a year tops.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Maybe I need to replace the wipers as well. I wasn't finding them to be effective this morning. I suspect they are long overdue for replacement.
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New wipers can make a huge difference, especially for cars parked outside, or with wipers that have been used on ice/snow.
 
Baked Potato said:
New wipers can make a huge difference, especially for cars parked outside, or with wipers that have been used on ice/snow.
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Many years ago I lived far north in the land of snow and ice where salt, sand, cinders and other road treatments were used. They were hell on wiper blades, I installed new ones twice a year, somewhere around thanksgiving and Easter.
 
Windshield washers are effective in addition to the wipers.

With the tractors we park them facing east so they get the morning sun.

If you want to go to extremes, a space heater in the cabin would probably work. Put it on a timer...car is pre-warmed. Sounds pretty nice. Electricity is cheap, right?

I've never tried it but I wonder if a cover over the exterior of the windshield would work. Might make it worse though by retarding the glass temperature change.

Anything that involves operator intervention...plugging in a heater, going out and pre-starting...good luck getting the kids to do it.
 
Jim K said:
good luck getting the kids to do it.
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I know. That's the problem. I got out this morning and drove both cars to warm them up before the kids left for school.
Easier for me to do that then pay for the repairs when they go driving into someone's fence.
I do feel like the only person in the house that thinks of things that might get in the way of your plans sometimes.
Dad stuff I guess.



Side note. My daughter called me yesterday to tell me the AC on her car didn't work. "Press the snowflake button honey" "You fixed it!"
Yes I did.

Meanwhile, I am up until 1 in the morning busting my hump because I walked out to see this:
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Because they make them out of plastic now

1762528362529.png


Me and my bunny got it replaced and back to working better than new. No body cares but when I say press the snowflake button, I am the hero.

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I need to go thank my dad for something I'm sure. I was way worse as a kid.
 
Park the car somewhere where the glass is not directly exposed to the sky - under a tree, facing a building, whatever. Reduce the radiation of heat into space (which is cold) so the windshield doesn't cool down as much.
Or, one of those magnetic windshield cover things like this one that is badly photoshopped (or, now-days, more likely AI'd) onto an image of a car by whoever is trying to sell this via the evil mail order empire.

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A 25 watt INCANDESCENT light bulb, properly shielded to prevent contact with car plastic parts, will keep the car just warm enough to prevent condensation most of the time.
 
Baked Potato said:
They don't have their instrument driver's rating?
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reminds me of a trip coming home from work a very very long time ago, when I was pushing hard through my IR training.
I think it was an ice storm I was driving though...can't remember for sure...maybe rain or fog...but the visibily was dropping to the point I couldn't see past the front bumper...I was having to use extra mental capacity just to fight the urge to go on instruments. Kept wanting to look down at the panel. An odd feeling. I'm sure many of you have had a similar experience....
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
What is the secret to preventing fog on the outside of your windshield? With temps dropping and the kids' cars live outside over night, The windows fog up.
Wipe it off, and it comes right back. Once the car is warm, the defroster will fix it but nobody is sitting in the driveway for 15 minutes and waiting for this.
I tried a few different glass cleaners. That didn't solve the problem. Both kids drive on a busy road into the morning sun. This is not safe. Is there a product I can apply that will prevent this?

View attachment 146931
Click to expand...
I don’t know if they still make it, but rubbing a Bull Durham Tobacco pouch on the inside works
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Maybe I need to replace the wipers as well. I wasn't finding them to be effective this morning. I suspect they are long overdue for replacement.
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If your windshield wipers are not removing visible moisture from the external surface of the windshield, they need to be replaced. That is, after all, their only job.
 
@SixPapaCharlie, is that a Chevy Cruze? I ask because it looks like the same dang part I replaced on my daughters Cruze a couple months ago! Then two weeks ago the temp sensor o-ring started seeping... The list goes on.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Once the car is warm, the defroster will fix it but nobody is sitting in the driveway for 15 minutes and waiting for this
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I live in a much colder part of the country, and I've never had to wait 15 minutes for the defroster/defogger to start working.
Start the car, push the defrost button (fan automatically at full blast), maybe one wiper cycle and a couple minutes later the windshield stays clear.

As someone else pointed out, all you have to do is get the windshield temperature above the dewpoint, what you lack in air temperature at start-up you compensate with high air volume. Modern (post 2000) cars start warming up really fast.
On really cold days it might be better to manually select the upper vents instead of the defroster mode, as it will allow recirculation mode to be selected (on fully mechanical climate control system it's not an issue).
 
Hell I walked a half mile to the bus stop and then rode the bus. Why all the kids need cars now?
 
Van Johnston said:
give them the garage and you park in the driveway.

Or make them walk to school. In the snow. Uphill. Both ways. Builds character.
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How it works at my house is the women get the garage and the men get the driveway.
Both me and my sone drive old Almost 200k mile Outlanders. The girls still have full coverage and some hull value in their cars.
I never leave the house anymore so it is my son's car and sometimes my daughter when dad makes a mess in the garage.
 
Flymy47 said:
@SixPapaCharlie, is that a Chevy Cruze? I ask because it looks like the same dang part I replaced on my daughters Cruze a couple months ago! Then two weeks ago the temp sensor o-ring started seeping... The list goes on.
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Buick Encore. I hate it. Needed a car for one of the kids and my sister was selling this so I bought it from her.
everything on it is plastic. Blind spots are terrible. I installed blind spot monitors in it because the visibility is horrible.
 
Flymy47 said:
@SixPapaCharlie, is that a Chevy Cruze? I ask because it looks like the same dang part I replaced on my daughters Cruze a couple months ago! Then two weeks ago the temp sensor o-ring started seeping... The list goes on.
Click to expand...
I had a ‘90 S-10 pickup and a coworker had an ‘89 S-10 Blazer with about 10,000 more miles than me. It got to the point where if he told me he had to fix something I went out and bought the parts for mine.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Buick Encore. I hate it. Needed a car for one of the kids and my sister was selling this so I bought it from her.
everything on it is plastic. Blind spots are terrible. I installed blind spot monitors in it because the visibility is horrible.
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Totally agree with all the crappy plastic parts. I replaced the cracked plastic coolant tower with an aftermarket aluminum one. Older used cars are a pain, but the time saved not having to play Uber Dad is worth it. That is, until that time is spent wrenching on old cars...
 
Flymy47 said:
Totally agree with all the crappy plastic parts. I replaced the cracked plastic coolant tower with an aftermarket aluminum one. Older used cars are a pain, but the time saved not having to play Uber Dad is worth it. That is, until that time is spent wrenching on old cars...
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It ain't just the GM stuff. I had a '02 Ford Ranger (excellent truck BTW) that had a plastic heater control valve on it. Ebay had a full metal one available for not much more than the cheap plastic one. When I traded it at 215K mile the metal one was still doing its thing ...
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
How it works at my house is the women get the garage and the men get the driveway.
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It works that way here, too. My wife gets to park in the cozy 1-car garage bay, I have to park uphill at the top of the driveway and walk back and forth to my car.

The mitigating factor is that I decided to put a nice woodshop in the two-car garage bay, which kinda limits my ability to complain about the situation.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Never going to happen. Have you seen what things cost?
My daughter wants to go to med school. She will be living here until she's 30.
My son wants to be a teacher. He will be living here the rest of his life.
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So you're an enabler.
:biggrin:
 
Brad W said:
reminds me of a trip coming home from work a very very long time ago, when I was pushing hard through my IR training.
I think it was an ice storm I was driving though...can't remember for sure...maybe rain or fog...but the visibily was dropping to the point I couldn't see past the front bumper...I was having to use extra mental capacity just to fight the urge to go on instruments. Kept wanting to look down at the panel. An odd feeling. I'm sure many of you have had a similar experience....
Click to expand...
Had a situation like that once on US30 driving over the hills near Ligonier, PA. It was sleeting, slushing, fogging and you couldn't see far. My wife was driving and I was using the GPS to tell her when the next curve/intersection was coming up.
 
Half Fast said:
So you're an enabler.
:biggrin:
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Absolutely. The closer they get to leaving the more I realize how much I like having them around.

I know I'm supposed to want them to grow up and get out but it's not going to bother me if they have to linger for a little while longer than our generation. I was out the door at 17.
 
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