Troubleshooter: Winter-driving tips to defrost your windshield faster, and others to avoid

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We’ve all heard our share of winter-driving tips, tricks, and ‘hacks,’ but there will always be more out there to learn more. One of the latest I picked up is quite promising; others, however, may be more grief than they’re worth.

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Sun-visor defrost

One of the biggest drags in trying to warm up a cold vehicle on a frosty morning that’s been parked outside all night is the time it can take to defrost the windshield. A hack for these chilly situations is to lower both sun-visors before hitting the ignition and setting the HVAC controls to defrost. The visors act as a barrier to the smooth flow of air up from the defrost vents, past the windshield, and onto the headliner. They’re not an air-tight barrier to be certain, but they will slow the air flow down enough to give the warm air more contact time with the cold glass. It works! Depending on the outside temperatures, frost build-up, and how long it takes your vehicle to produce warm air through the vents, it can defrost a complete windshield up to twice as fast as with the sun-visors folded flat.

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Not all tips and tricks bring such desirable results, however. You seldom hear about the trick of using a section of pantyhose as an emergency replacement for a broken engine drive belt anymore, for instance. This is because most automakers have moved from traditional V-groove pulleys, which would accept the temporary hosiery repair, to the wider ribbed type that take a much longer, flatter serpentine belt.

Driving hacks to avoid

Wiper vibes

Likewise, remember that now-defunct device that promised to remove ice buildup from your wipers? This gadget was an electrically powered vibrator that attached to the wiper arms, and when activated would violently shake and slam the wipers against the windshield to dislodge ice. It’s a good thing that these machines are gone, because this action easily cracked plenty of innocent glass when the right-sized chunk of ice came into contact with the windshield.

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Hand-sanitizer lock de-icing

Hand sanitizer as a lock de-icer only works if it’s strong enough. Not everyone has a squeeze bottle of lock de-icer in their pocket when Jack Frost locks them out of their vehicle on a cold day, but thanks to pandemic preparation thinking, many carry those travel-sized bottles of hand sanitizer. Most health agencies call for a minimum alcohol content of at least 60% for them to be effective, but there are plenty of sub-par sanitizers on the market containing lower amounts. Using one of these cheap knock-offs in your car’s frozen door lock cylinder may not free things up at all and may in fact freeze even further. Also remember that even if a sanitizer squish does free the lock, it could stay sticky enough to attract dirt and grime causing wear and increasing the likelihood of a future failure.

HVAC overheat relief

The heater core behind the dash has only a fraction of the heat-exchange capacity of the main radiator, so cranking the cabin heat to cool an overheating engine will only bring minimal relief to the engine’s cooling system. If your vehicle’s temperature gauge is in the warning zone, shut down the engine as soon as it’s safe to do so and pop the hood to release some of the heat. Today’s lightweight engine alloys don’t take much to warp, so it takes frighteningly little time to cause major damage by running an overheated engine.