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Saw these on a neighbor's car (lemmy.world)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I loved the wing window on my first car, a VW Beetle. It really did great air movement, both for hot days and for helping defog the windshield (the blower for that was terribly underpowered).

I always called it a vent window, maybe it's a regional thing like tyre/tire.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Might not have been the blower fan that was the problem.

    Heat for an air cooled Beetle came by way of square tubes that drew air across the exhaust manifolds. Said tubes were the edges of the floor pan, right behind the running boards. These were famous for rotting out, so you wouldn't get optimal airflow, and a bunch of it was just outside air anyway. The heat exchanger bits on the exhaust manifolds would also rust away, making for the same problem.

    Then, when you have to drive to work in an ice storm in your Beetle with no heat, and the windshield is completely obscured, you have to just stick your head out the window. When oncoming traffic passes you, you jerk your head inside again, blinded and surprised, and quickly wipe the slush out of your eyes. You still can't see, and realize it's because of the aforementioned windshield thing, so you stick your head out again.

    Here comes a bus. "Welp, I'm just gonna have to take it."

    Ahhh, 1992.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    No, the heat exchangers were fine, the design just sucked. I had seen aftermarket electric fan boosters to try and push more air through the vent pipes and help things. I mean, it had a long way to go! But even the squirrel cage fan in the blower assembly in the truck wasn't all that big or strong, so the air it pushed up onto the window was far too little to do much. I loved my Beetle though, despite all its issues.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago*

    Heat alone is also pretty shitty at defogging windows, it works a lot faster when you have the heater and AC running simultaneously. Which you cant do in a Beetle, since most of them didn't have AC.

    In modern cars the air first goes past the AC, where it cools down and loses most of its humidity due to condensation. The it passes the heater where it heats up again, further reducing the relative humidity. That way you are blasting hot and dry air on your windshield, which defogs it much faster than blasting it with hot but still moist air

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