V70: General V70 - inefficient heater and screen clearing

[St Evelyn]

Originally Posted by v70stu

Why are so many people not keen on scraping now? I watched a neighbour stood outside his Peugeot 5008 one morning last week, waiting for it to defrost the screen. For 20 minutes in -3 cold!
Scrape it and drive away!!!

+1

I always start the engine, hit the defrost button, then jump out and scrape the windows (and lights). Generally the lights are already close to being clear by the time I've scraped the windscreen and side window, so everything's good to go within a couple of minutes.

As soon as the scraping is done I'm back in the car, hit auto, and away I go.

[harryd]

I agree with everything here.
It is what it is.
Things that can help though are not keeping jackets in the car to retain any dampness nor entering the car with damp jackets on.
There is a little supplementary plug in (12vsocket) heater available from Volvo but for the life of me I cant find the details just now.

Plug in for a few mins before driving off, it is rumoured to help a bit.

This defrost/demist thing is common and I weigh it up against the benefits of having such a car at all other times :-)

[Davedlr]

As a follow-up to my original post, I took the car in to PWCars in Beaconsfield for its service just before Xmas.

I mentioned the screen clearing problem, and as part of the service they replaced the cabin filter. They told me it looked like it had never been changed as it was black, and should have been replaced every 20k miles.

With a shiny new cabin filter in place, the demist and heating in general now work a treat. I'm now one happy V70 owner.

[gskowen]

If I know its going to be cold next day, I empty the washers that night, then fill up the next day with warm (not too hot) water so the wipers get a warm up every time you squirt. Cheaper than screen wash, more effective and keeps blades flexy simply because they are warmer. Also keep 5 litres hot water in the car for topping up on the journey.

Free hot water available from motorway services toilets!

[gskowen]

Another point to remember, the D5 block takes 12.5 litres of coolant. A lot to warm up.

[Gazdok]

I miss my garage as we are extending and using it to store / dump material.

On cold mornings I now start the engine, put on the screen defrost, the rear window heater and the heated seats, then go round the car to clear the windows and are usually ok to go when I finish with the windows.

Just make sure the car is using the climate control and not just blowing air!

[AlistairQ]

I've got a small brick that I just keep on the side of the drive (hidden under a shrub, just in case anyone were to try and use it for anything else), its just enough weight against the go pedal to keep the idle at about 2000rpm while I scrape the windows/lights etc.
Even one or two minutes at 2000rpm, rather than idle, seems to make a huge difference to the warm up speed.