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Colorado Law states that a car parked along a highway must have it's parking lights on. But apparently car companies think that you shouldn't be able to park along side a highway because the parking lights turn off automatically within just a few minutes. WHY!!!

When I warm up my car I want to start with recirculating air. It was -34 °F last week, it's been below -20 °F every day. But when I turn on recirculation in the Avalon it turns it back off after a few minutes. WHY!!!

 

Well, recirculating warm air in a car during the cold is a good way to fog up the windows. When that happens, I'm sure there are plenty of people that forgot they had it set to recirculate.

 

I thought all late model vehicles had the European system of turning a very small light on front and back, dependent on the direction the indicator lever was set ...... In the dark, it gives good enough light to see where you are walking and covers the requirement to have a vehicle parked on the side of the road, illuminated on the road side facing the traffic ....

T1 Terry

 

The chill effect of the air conditioner part should remove the moisture from the air, then the cabin air passes through the heater section of the system to warm the cabin more to remove more moisture.
The problem comes when using waste ICE heat for the heating rather than reverse cycle HVAC, the ICE "radiator" in the heater box can't chill first to remove the moisture, but clever "radiator" and evaporator ducting, controlled by air flow redirection, could have both running at the same time to remove cabin moisture ..... over here, Ford were doing that mid '95, double layer evaporator and condenser using reverse cycle flow valves weren't even thought of back then ......

T1 Terry

 

On average, yes. But 2 things: 1 you need a moisture source, such as a human body. And 2, when it's -30 °F isn't a battle with fog. It's a battle with frost, engine temps and a whole lot of other things.

Therefore, if we were to do it the way the car is designed:

1. I'd get in the car, start the engine and turn on the auto climate control,
2. Then go around and dust of any snow and scrape off any frost, then unplug the block heater.
3. But then I'd get in and... no heat yet. The stock block heater will have the engine at about 30 °F warmer than ambient, which means that it's going to be around 0 °F even with the lousy stock block heater.
4. But you can't lock the door on the Avalon and go back inside. The car is meant to be driven. So off I'd go if I go by how the car is designed.
5. Meanwhile the temps still wouldn't reach much of anything. Even with the defrost on, I still might be getting frost on the -35 °F windshield from every bit of breath that reaches it. I have to try really hard to breath in a way that I don't direct my breaths in front of me.
6. As I go down the road the engine will continue to warm up, usually reaching around 90 °F to 120 °F by the time I reach work... Pathetic if you ask me.

How I'd like to do it:

1. I'd get in the car, start the engine and turn on the auto climate control and leave it on floor, defrost and recirculation, which I currently can't do since it reverts back to sucking outside air in just a few minutes.
2. Then I'd like to lock the door of the car and go back into my warm home and let the thing warm up. But I can't do that either. Even using the physical key won't work as it automatically unlocks itself immediately after locking it.
3. Since it would be on recirculate, the cabin temps, glass temps and engine temps could all have a chance at warming up, unlike sucking -35 °F air through the heater core because "it could fog up the glass."
4. About half an hour later, I could unplug, turn the climate control back to outside air, and not have to worry as much about my windshield frosting over as I go down the road. That, and be in a nice warm car and perhaps see engine temps actually reach operating temperatures.

What I'm doing:

1. Instead, after scraping the glass, I just idle the car for half and hour with the climate control off and the car unlocked, ready to be stolen.
2. Then I unplug, get in and turn on climate controls, sometimes starting out with recirculation for a short time as I let it swich back to outside air automatically after just a couple of minutes.

I don't think the air conditioner does anything at -30's °F or °C.

 

Ahhh... well..... there is that eh Gotta ask, at that temp and no heated garage, why would you want to drive the car at all .... you need to move to a warmer climate, -2*C is grounds for taking the day off over here

T1 Terry

 

Well, I'd ride my bike, but with my new snow plow job I gotta get to work in an on-call, get-here-in-an-hour fashion and trudge through deep snow at times. That would make riding my bike a bit hard. At least letting the car warm up lets me get some coffee and breakfast and put my lunch together.

Maybe I could make it work if I got a bicycle with fatter, better tires and got lunch figured out the night before.

 

I gotta say, none of that sounds like a fun way to live ..... tromping through the snow was a few week ends a yr in my much younger days after driving some 400kms to get to where there was snow to ski on .... the thought of riding a bike at even close to 0*C is more like some form of torture in a really bad dream ..... I'll stop complaining about the heat over here after hearing that we are hoping it will drop to around 25*C tonight to make sleeping a bit more comfortable, the 30*C + over night drains the life out of you after a while

T1 Terry

 

I usually start getting heat stroke at around 27 °C or 80 °F. I could stay outside all day long at -40 °C (-40 °F). I've done so at -48 °C or -52 °F.

 

At those temperatures, I wouldn't turn the climate control on whatever the case until the engine reaches operating temp. Putting it on flows coolant through a radiator to steal heat form the engine to heat the cabin, and efficient engines, like in Toyota hybrids, aren't making much excess heat while idling after start up. At higher but still cold temps, I have watched the temp gauge drop in cars when I turned the heat on too soon, and that is while driving the car.

An engine block heater isn't going to help with heating the coolant. The coolant in the engine radiator and its hoses will still be ice cold when the thermostat finally opens.

Does the Avalon have push button start? You should be able to manually lock the door with the key hidden in the fob while the car is running. Otherwise, seat and steering wheel heaters are great while waiting for the engine to get hot. There are aftermarket ones.

 

Well, since Elon Musk is now on Trump's Cabinet, he should be well-positioned to look after his interests via lobbying.

 

Being close to a sociopath puts a bullseye on Musk. Look at Trump’s business and previous staff relations.

Bob Wilson

 

This is one thing the automatic heat control does right. If turned to "auto" it doesn't turn on the heater until the engine is hot, usually starting at a low fan speed at around 100 °F and then finally getting up to a fast or fastest fan speed at 140 °F. Still not quite operating temperatures, but better than just cranking it and forgetting it.

I have an engine block heater for heating, well, the engine block. The block then heats the coolant. The heater core circuit is independent of the radiator and thermostat, unless the thermostat gets blocked open.

Yes it has push button start and no, the physical hidden key in the fob won't lock the door. It automatically unlocks if you try to do that with the car running.

I don't mind the cold. I mainly want clear glass is all. Maybe heated rear seats for passengers would be nice though.

 

The Subaru works that way. Either the fan is still moving air over the cold heater core, or it is wasting energy to move cold air around.

The heater core is part of the engine circuit in most cars; coolant is moving through it while the engine is running. If the blend door is closed, it isn't an issue. If it's open, then the heater core acts as a little radiator while the engine is trying to heat up. I assume Toyota did the auto HVAC system right for this.

I wonder if this could be something that can changed in the settings. There is a couple of choices for the auto locking and unlocking in many cars.

 

What about a small fan heater on the floor on the passenger side plugged into the mains the same way as the block heater. A remote on/off switch on the power supply to the heater, or more up market, a heater with a remote control, turn that on 30 mins before you need to drive off.

In those temps, I'd imagine you'd already have a radiator blanket fitted to stop the cold air circulating through the radiator

T1 Terry

 

Both descriptions check out. The heater core is part of the engine circuit—and it's in the part that's independent of the radiator and thermostat, called the bypass circuit because it returns to the water pump through a separate small nipple next to the thermostat that allows flow past the thermostat before it opens. (That's handy not just so you can have a little cabin heat before the thermostat opens, but also for making sure the thermostat does open. The hot coolant needs a way to get there so the thermostat senses it.)

In the Prius generations with exhaust heat recovery, that bypass loop also serves to pick heat up from the exhaust while the thermostat is still closed.

 

This was my main point. If I turn the car to recirculate the heated air (closed blend door) it then decides to automatically go back to fresh outside air, thus making the heater cor act as a little radiator while the engine is trying to heat up.

I did that for a while. Maybe I should go back. If only there were one that fit on the dash and heated the windshield. Another idea is to splice in a 1,500 or 2,000W circulating tank heater. Then I could warm up the engine in an hour or two, maybe less, without even turning it on. I've done that to cars I've owned in the past. But the coolant lines on the Avalon are a bit harder to get to work with a normal circulating tank heater.

No, because one day I'm trying to get to work at -30 °F, the next I'm trying to climb a 12,000ft mountain pass.

 

That's not the blender door I'm talking about. I don't think that is called a blender door, as it is open or closed.

I'm referring to the blender door that works with the heater core. Coolant flows through the core all the time, even when the air conditioning is on. The blender door closes to bypass the core when heat isn't called for. When max heat is needed, the door opens all the way, directing air to the core, and none to the bypass path. For less heat, the door partially closes to blend heated air from the core with unheated air that went through the bypass.

Have the climate calling heat on start up in freezing temps, that door will be open, whether recirculating or not. The cold air going past the core will take the little heat out of the coolant, adding a delay to engine warm up and getting full heat from the vents.

Auto climate should keep that blender door closed until the engine reaches minimum warm temp. That assumes the programmers knew how this all works, but I'll except that they did. Even then, the system in the Subaru will start cabin heating too early for my preference. At temperatures warmer than -30F, I've seen the temp gauge hit minimum warm engine, the heat start, and then the temp gauge start to drop.

There are little 12V heaters for windshields. A rubbing alcohol mix in a spray bottle for windshield de-icing likely would be faster. A quick search found 2 part alcohol(I assume 70%) to 1 part water for this, though you might need more alcohol in the mix at those temps.

Spraying or sponging on a 3 part vinegar to 1 part water mix the night before is said to prevent the glass from icing up to begin with.

The cooling system is designed for hard driving in a hot desert. A partial grill block will speed up warm up time and improve aerodynamics, while still allowing enough air flow for most driving conditions. I've installed such in the past, and left them on year round. Maybe an easy to remove one could be done if removing is needed.