Frosted by defroster...

[David Ritter]

On Monday 27 November 2000 15:23, Bernard Littau wrote:
> Hi Scott,
>
> Great write up!  I am about to do the trip past Shasta tomorrow -- we came
> down last week from Seattle, although in my wife's Saab 9-5.  We leave
> tomorrow morning from San Jose to head back.
>
> >From your description, it is not the A/C you need to fix, but rather, I
> > find
>
> it very likely you have a pinhole leak in your heater core.  

This has been debated here before, but I must disagree. The conditions Scott 
describe are likely to cause a rapid fogging of all windows even with a 
perfect heater core. If you are running the climate control in automatic or 
defrost above 40 degrees, the a/c compressor is doing some drying of the air. 
If you happen to be in humid conditions when the temp drops below 40, you can 
get a rapid whiteout in the car. I think this can be caused by the climate 
computer getting fooled. You are fine till that compressor cuts, then you 
suddenly need warmer air to defog the windows. The conditions are difficult 
to reproduce for some people, they never see this. I don't think the 
engineers saw this either, or they would have given us the compressor switch. 
I saw this first on a fairly low mile 200q, never had a core leak, just a 
weird (team door handle) climate system.

David