First, check the obvious: Is the fuse okay? Defroster grids draw a lot of current (10 to 20 amps), and if the fuse is undersize, it won’t last. Suppose your defroster grid doesn’t work at all. Add to this installation att the dealership or a glass shop-it’s definitely not covered by insurance. The compound-curve style of rear window is several hundred dollars, and a large hatchback’s backlite on, say, a Camaro, can easily top a grand or more. You don’t want to have to replace the glass to effect this repair. If you must clean the rear glass, scrub gently, and in the direction of the grid, not across it. If your window has a defroster grid, the only thing that should ever touch the glass is a soft cloth dampened with window cleaner. Don’t cram stuff into the back, and don’t let the load shift backward in your miinivan so that it touches the glass. This means that it’s possible for boxes, furniture or any other hard object one might place in a car to scratch the wire. ![]() They are very easy to scratch, and will not work properly if the scratch breaks the continuity along the wire. The resistance wires are silk-screened, essentially painted, onto the glass. You can find more great projects at Popular Mechanics DIY Central.ĭanger! Let us make this perfectly clear: Do not try to scrape hard frost from a rear window equipped with a heater grid. Try these repairs yourself, and save money and be safe this winter! This project was originally published in the January 2001 issue of Popular Mechanics. Now what? This Instructable will help you identify and repair some of the most common rear-window defroster problems, as well as tell you how to avoid further damage to your defroster. A worse scerio: The rear-window defroster grid has packed it in completely, requiring you to either drive blind (bad idea), or resort to scraping the rear window clear with your trusty wooden-handled snow scraper (really bad idea). ![]() But the rear-window defroster clears only a narrow strip near the top and bottom the window, leaving a wide strip of glass as translucent as a barrister’s door, and absolutely no visibility to the rear. ![]() It takes a few minutes to clear the snow, and by then the engine has warmed up enough to melt the frost clinging to the inside of the windshield, and has actually made inroads to the frost on the side windows. Snow has covered the entire car to a depth of several inches.
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