Scary drive home

inovermyhead

inovermyhead

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Well that was fun...not. Decided to take the car out for a spin this afternoon and got caught in the mother of all rain storms on the way home, then found out that the wipers were not working, they worked when I last checked them but that was in the workshop on a nice dry summer day. As it got darker and darker and the car steamed up vision decreased to the point where the only option was to drop the window and brave the weather. As I was only a kilometre or so from home I decided to press on, then it started to hail (summer storm) made it home by the skin of my teeth, don't ever want to go through that again, at least the car had a good wash though.

Cheers. John
 
Fingers crossed I haven't got hail dimpled panels, the hail stones were peanut size but I won't know until I can see in daylight, but at least I got home in one piece, seriously couldn't see the parked cars I drove past...
 
Sounds like you arrived unscathed.
During the Roads to Monterey tour this past August, Doug McKenzie lost his driver side wiper, in a torrential rain as our caravan made its way through the canyon of truck spray in Indianapolis. Our windows were constantly fogging, despite the air flow to the windshield, luckily I had my wife to wipe away the fog. I don't know how Doug was able to see at all.
 

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water repellant treatment fro windscreen is highly recommended. At highway speeds you wouldn't even need wipers.
 
xjan99 said:
water repellant treatment fro windscreen is highly recommended. At highway speeds you wouldn't even need wipers.
Click to expand...
Agree. RainX works. An instructor called me for not having RainX on my windshield on the track one rainy Sunday. Plus my wiper arms have an extra? mounting pin.
 
inovermyhead said:
Fingers crossed I haven't got hail dimpled panels, the hail stones were peanut size but I won't know until I can see in daylight, but at least I got home in one piece, seriously couldn't see the parked cars I drove past...
Click to expand...

If it was a CSL you'd be in trouble, the metal on the roof is wafer thin. I would hate to think what effect hail would have.
 
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Yes, RainX became my invisible wipers through a couple of states until a replacement set of wipers were overnighted by Mario at VSR to our next hotel on the road to Monterey.

Doug
 
My first drive in Texas with my car was when it was delivered via truck from the port in LA where it had arrived from Maui. It was early February and the open truck had passed through the mountains and freezing rain so the car had a glaze of ice that was studded with pebbles from the road. Nice. I was cold and sprinkling here in Austin and the driver wouldn't meet me at the house and asked for a larger place to meet. He suggested a Walmart, so we said ok.
I'd recently purchased the car and had only driven it to the tire shop, inspection station and dock, so I'd hardly driven it at all, let along began troubleshooting issues.

After it came off the truck, we headed home, but the engine kept cutting out. The wire to the distributor had been pulled off the ballast resistor, and every rev of the engine would pull it away from the terminal, but when the engine quit, it would make contact again letting the engine start and idle fine. After sorting that out, I headed home. The wipers started out slow, and then got slower and slower until I turned them off fearing that something would overhead, or shear. No heater fan, so the windows were continually fogging up. I followed my wife's tail lights for the couple of miles to get home at slow speeds. Very not fun.
 
There are anti fog treatments for the inside. I find they cause some blurring because they are hydrophilic. You can try the old scuba trick (that's a lot of spit or use a little dish soap). Also, Can't you just run the AC on max cold and heater the heater control at hot at the same time (eg like the defrost setting on modern cars)?

John
 
No AC in the car, although I may see what's available in terms of after market after yesterday's event, the good news is NO hail dents visible after washing the car today, poor thing must wonder what's going on with all the water over the last two days. We have just had another major storm this time the hail was the size of golf balls... Glad it wasn't yesterday.

Cheers. John
 
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