h a l f b a k e r y"Bun is such a sad word, is it not?" -- Watt, "Waiting for Godot"
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And add a thermostatically controlled heating element system that warms the air immediately until the engine heat kicks in.
I suppose you could even choose to have it turn your radio on or not. Eliminate the whole "pre flight checklist" thing you need to do on cold mornings. It's a car, not a 747.
Chauffeur
http://en.wikipedia...i/Chauffeur#History
The answer to your problem [8th of 7, Jan 17 2011]
Found it!
http://imgur.com/gallery/XxUYV
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 17 2011]
[link]
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Why not have your car run Windows and then you
can just drag all these tasks to the Startup folder ? |
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Break the windshield wipers, that will. But you can have all of those things done by setting it up before you turn the car off the night before. |
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Or you could just push a button. What if it turns out to not be so cold the next morning? |
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Regarding broken wipers, if it's Arctic cold we're talking about you could have slightly warmed water spray onto the window before the wipers turn on. Yet another feature you could add. It would only take a heating element at the windshield water tank to add enough temp to the water to melt the ice without cracking the windshield. |
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... yet another feature to go wrong ... |
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Yea, I guess we need to perfect that complicated heating element technology first. |
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In a similar vein to [8th], I was going to suggest that you may as well get some minion to do it for you. Strangely, though, I was thinking of putting on a Patrick Stewart accent and saying "make it so!". |
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Well, not sure what a good minion is charging for their minioning services these days but I assume a button is cheaper. |
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Hey, if I were rolling in minions I'd bypass the cold alltogether and have them do my driving for me. "Hey minion, go get me a jelly donut and a 6 pack of malt liquor." |
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One's Jag does this, shirley? |
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Right, addressed that already. As part of the sequence, have the slightly warmed de-icing water spray on the window long enough to get rid of the ice, then the wipers turn on. |
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If your car is incrusted in 3 feet of ice, you can always elect to not push the button. This would primarily be for use outside of Siberia. |
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This would be more of a programmable start sequence button that you could customize. |
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Might even have a summer program that opens all the windows to let the hot air out and blasts the a/c. |
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A mechanical finger, interfaced to an array of temperature
sensors, could even press the button for you. |
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Key fob start is available on a few vehicles. I've only
actually used it on a Chevrolet Avalanche (borrowed)
and in this country (Dubai) it's the a/c that you want
running for a few minutes so you don't toast your
buns. |
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//A mechanical finger, interfaced to an array of temperature sensors, could even press the button for you.// |
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I assume you're being playfully facetious. |
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But ok, let's just get in the car, turn on the heat, turn on the windshield defogger, spray water on the windshield, turn on the wipers, turn on the rear window heating element and turn on the seat heaters if the car is so equipped. |
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Then we won't need to muck about with all that tedious pushing a single button that does it all nonsense. |
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Because I was just trying to explain to the wife and daughter the importance of turning the wipers OFF at night, because an ice storm could come up and weld them to the windshield. Wiper designers seem to think wipers shouldn't shut of until they've cycled once, and when there's a layer of ice and another layer of snow in the way, the wipers aren't going to move, but they will keep trying. And if they move while you are scraping on the windshield, it is startling and dangerous. And it isn't much good for the wiper blades to be chattering over chunks of ice. I suppose I need to start pulling the wiper arms out to the retract position standing out away from the windshield, but then they'd freeze in that position and really accumulate ice. |
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Anyhow, [doc], where do you live that you don't have to take this all into account, and are there any houses available? |
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Well, 3rd times a charm I guess. |
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As I've said twice before, heating elements would
warm water and spray it on the windshield to melt
the ice, then the wipers would cycle on once the
the ice is melted. |
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I think I see the problem... you're in England aint'cha doc... that's frost on your windshield, not ice. If you put a slightly heavier glycol mix in the tank then that will work without heating. Won't work with ice though without causing more problems than you're solving. |
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First off is the amount of warm water you need. Even if the outside temperature is only 0C and you heat the water to 85C then you'll need as much water as you have ice to melt... and that doesn't include the effect of the cold windshield. 85C is easily windshield cracking temperature... so you use say 20C water... now you need 4x as much water as you have ice to melt... and that's still just if it's only 0C outside. So half an inch of ice on the windshield you need almost 2cu ft of water. And where does the water go ? It goes into your engine compartment then pours out where it puddles and freezes your tyres to the driveway. |
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And as long as I have the floor, what freakin' idiot designed my truck, which is mostly a pretty reasonable vehicle otherwise, so you have to bend the wiper on one side by almost 2" to get it past the radio antenna. |
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//Spraying warm water on frozen glass... yeah,
good idea.// |
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It doesn't need to be hot enough to crack the
glass, just above freezing will do it. When there's
frost on my window I push the windshield sprayer
button, it sprays water on the frost, I turn the
wipers on and it works great with a few squirts.
That's unheated water and it works without a
problem. |
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Where I live cold mornings consist of a cold car
and condensation or light frost on the windows
which could be
easily wiped away without having to get too
complicated. Like I said, I think another system
might be advisable above the Arctic circle. |
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It also might be nice to have it be able to roll the
windows down and up to clear the fog off. |
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I want a bigger version of what they have on the Prius: a hot water Thermos filled from the previous journey, which can be used to preheat the engine and the passenger compartment. |
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[doc], I live in southern Missouri, latitude 37-ish, and I have days where I cannot even get into the car to push any buttons because the whole vehicle is encased in inches of ice. I'd vote for your idea if it was programmable and remotely-triggered, but as it is, the only button I am looking for is one that'll get my garage clean enough to put the car in without climbing out a window. [ ] |
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Nope, just water. Works fine. |
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The San Francisco Bay area has a very mild climate. |
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oh, there... that's not even frost; most likely condensed margarita rime... and don't y'all drive 'round in starlet-powered palanquins ? |
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Up here in Michigan for washer fluid we use the good stuff. |
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//don't y'all drive 'round in starlet-powered
palanquins?// |
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Very poorly thought out. [+] |
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Thank you D, I'll take that as a mercy bun. |
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I think I read somewhere about an iphone app that allows you to control many of your cars functions remotely. It'd be a bitch if it got lost or stolen and someone could potentially gain access to your car, but it's pretty novel in that you can turn on defrost, wipers, etc using the app. and developing a cold-start sequence could probably be done easily. That would seem to me to be a more beneficial solution, as you could easily do it from inside some time before you leave. |
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Then again, weather has been pretty interesting as usual here in new england, and I find that if I turn on my car 5-10 minutes before I leave and put on defrost by the time I get in anything on my windshield (no matter how much snow or ice there is) is either completely melted or can be swept away with a single motion of the wipers. So perhaps an even simpler solution is leaving defrost on and having a remote start. |
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Oh, there's an app for that... on a car with the
appropriate equipment already installed. GM has
OnStar, and there are apps to interface with OnStar.
Other car manufacturers have similar systems.
Putting software on your phone does not magically
put hardware in your car, as sweet as that would be. |
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No, but creating sophware that piggybacks off the ECU (which is what controls all of these functions) and can be used remotely probably would not be that difficult either. |
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I just saw a TV advert of a woman remote-unlocking a car from her phone. I didn't pay much attention, but apparently that is now widely available. |
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