Cayman launched in LA yesterday!

Grall said:
Err, yeah, it's needed. Well, you CAN live without it of course - I grew up with cars all without AC and they got hot in the summers and cold in the winters (REALLY cold sometimes; no fun sitting down in car seats that are -25C or even less), and around 2000 or so my dad finally bought a Saab 900 with AC and DAMN what a difference. It got cool in the summers in a few seconds, and warm in the winter in a few seconds... Wow. :) Since then, all his subsequent vehicles have all had AC and I'm not surprised.
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He must have had something other than AC in it, because AC doesn't heat your car, and I haven't heard about any system that heats your car in seconds, well maybe a flame thrower :). Are you sure it didn't have a pre heater or something like that. Old 80s and 90s Volvos heat pretty fast atleast ours did, as lot's of fuel burned = lot's of heat in the car.
 
Cayman and the boxster are girl versions of the 911!


Dr Evil said:
He must have had something other than AC in it, because AC doesn't heat your car, and I haven't heard about any system that heats your car in seconds,
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Ac doesn't heat the car? So my cars have an Ac for cooling and something else that spews out warm air through the same vents for warming? Learn something every day!

Seconds is an exaggeration ofc, but our Mercedes and Volvo (before I Got rammed by another volvo which ended my cars life prematurely ) do a pretty good job of heating during a NORWEGIAN winter. -25 is converted to a nice +20 (Celsius) within a minute or two!

The only problem is that RWD is worthless during winter time, even with new good winter tires + sand bags in the back to add grip on the back!
 
Cheezdoodles said:
Ac doesn't heat the car? So my cars have an Ac for cooling and something else that spews out warm air through the same vents for warming? Learn something every day!
Click to expand...

No seems like you didn't learn...

The heating and cooling in a car with AC works in completely different ways. Cooling works so that a compressor draws hot air from the cabin to the engine bay, similarly how a fridge removes warm air from the inside to the outside. This requires additional power and thus AC in a car consumes fuel and more so when it's hot. Heating of the car is not reverse of this.

The compressor in the car does not participate in the heating process of a car during winter and in many cars you can't even turn the compressor on when it's very cold. heating of the car is done by the heat generated by the engine itself through it's own cooling liquid. That's why a less fuel efficient cars heat up faster and for example many new efficient cars especially diesels are struggling to get warm.

Many new diesel cars in northern Europe have now electric heating "panels" inside the engine bay similar to regular electric radiators in people's homes, those consume fuel also. Often cars have a Webasto or similar fuel consuming parking heater that heats up the engine and the cabin.

http://www.webasto.com/products-and-markets/car/en/html/8291.html

More often though, atleast in Finland cars are installed with a cylinder-block heater which has an electric plug in front of the car. This is why people also have an electric post with regular sockets in front of their parking places, where the cylinder-block heater gets its power. This system prewarms the engine and the cabin, if you also have a cabin heater. With these systems it's possible to heat up the car fast even during very cold weather, although new fuel efficient cars still might struggle to keep the temperature.

I'm very sceptical (to put it mildly) about a car that has none of these systems to heat up from -25 to +20 in 2-3 minutes of regular driving. Heh maybe a hummer or some other vehicle that burns fuel like there is no tomorrow.

Yes the warm and cold air come from the same vents and you control them with the same knobs, but that's where the similarities end. It's totally different system within the car that actually does the work, and having the AC compressor doesn't help to heat up the car during winter.
 
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If your car has trouble heating up in the winter, you just block the air flow to the radiator with a piece of cardboard or carpet or something. It's a pretty common solution here in Canada in any event.
 
AlphaWolf said:
If your car has trouble heating up in the winter, you just block the air flow to the radiator with a piece of cardboard or carpet or something. It's a pretty common solution here in Canada in any event.
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Huh? All cars have a thermostat that is closed when cool so the coolant doesn't flow...instead it is locked inside the engine block. When the thermostat is closed the radiator has zero ability to cool the engine so any effort to block air around the radiator is futile. Now when the coolant that is locked inside the engine warms up the thermostat opens....that is when the coolant starts to flow from the radiator into the engine. In other words if the thermostat doesn't open the engine overheats because the hot coolant is trapped inside the engine block when it should normally flow to the radiator.

If the car cannot get warm then there's something wrong with the thermostat...some people replace the thermostat with one that opens at a higher temp which allow hotter coolant to flow to the heater core which equals hotter air from the heater vents. Another aid to warmup the engine faster is an engine block warmer.
 
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RudeCurve said:
Huh? All cars have a thermostat that is closed when cool so the coolant doesn't flow...instead it is locked inside the engine block. When the thermostat is closed the radiator has zero ability to cool the engine so any effort to block air around the radiator is futile. Now when the coolant that is locked inside the engine warms up the thermostat opens....that is when the coolant starts to flow from the radiator into the engine. In other words if the thermostat doesn't open the engine overheats because the hot coolant is trapped inside the engine block when it should normally flow to the radiator.

If the car cannot get warm then there's something wrong with the thermostat...some people replace the thermostat with one that opens at a higher temp which allow hotter coolant to flow to the heater core which equals hotter air from the heater vents. Another aid to warmup the engine faster is an engine block warmer.
Click to expand...

think about it for a while, you'll get it.
 
Dr Evil said:
piece of crap? Cardboard of carpet is not going to preheat the engine for better fuel consumption or faster cabin temperature rise.
Click to expand...

No, but its going to make your engine heat up for a faster rise in cabin temperature. It's also going to cost approximately nothing.
 
AlphaWolf said:
No, but its going to make your engine heat up for a faster rise in cabin temperature. It's also going to cost approximately nothing.
Click to expand...

It doesn't heat up any faster, it just heats and heats and heats forever because your car has no way to regulate it's temperature now that you've blocked the radiator. Great... Now you just get to warp the heads so that your headgasket fails and blow an extraordinary amount of nitric oxide into the air because of your stratospheric combustion temperatures. Which, by the way, causes oil breakdown and premature oil and compression ring failure, as well as overheating your valves which leads to premature stem and seat failure.

All in all, that's a ridiculous and stupid thing to do.
 
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