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My brother’s first car was a 1989 Dodge Colt. He couldn’t run heat, wipers, and headlights at the same time. So driving at night, in the winter, when it was raining, became this dance of running the wipers until your ass was almost frozen to the seat, then turning them off and running the heat until you were almost blind, then repeat.
I would guess that would have had vacuum powered wipers. And the heat comes from the engine - was the blower motor really struggling that bad with the headlights on? I don’t mean to sound skeptical, but this is really surprising to me!
Vacuum wipers in 1989? 59 maybe. Sounds like the alternator output was too weak to keep up with the electrical demand of headlights, blower, and wipers.
I would also like to autopsy this car.
I have no idea. He was also like, the third owner, so it’s quite possible that things were failing.
My first brand-new car was a '90 Nissan Sentra, back when Sentras were the absolute bottom of Nissan’s product line. It had AC but the car basically couldn’t accelerate with it on unless I was going downhill. Unfortunately I lived in Florida (no hills) so I drove around with no AC. In Florida. This was bad enough but also the windows were hand-cranked so I just left them down all the time. That car was a soggy mess and I kept getting shit stolen.
What would happen if you ran them all?
Blown fuse or just all of them ran like crap/stuttery?
Just ran like crap. Headlights too dim to see, etc.
2005 1.0 Opel Corsa on a hot summer day ahh feeling. Brings back memories
Yes, don’t idle in the sun without running the blower full tilt on warm with the windows down or risk your motor overheating.
ASS
+1 for hybrids lol
I used to drive a lot of 4-bangers and remember having to do that with pretty much every one of them either to overtake another vehicle or even sometimes driving up a steep hill lol. The air conditioning just sucked so much power from those little engines.
Been driving a hybrid for 6 or 7 years now, which also has a little 4-cylinder engine, but the electric motor more than makes up for that. It’s got a dash display showing the electric motor/ICE power split, and when you punch the gas, you can see the electric motor doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Love it.
The AC compressor shuts off when your engine exceeds ~4k rpm on most cars anyways. It can only spin so fast without causing problems. And if you’re trying to pass you’re probably exceeding 4k (on a gas engine) and the car is smart enough to figure it out.
A lot of newer cars don’t have the clutch anymore, they instead use a pressure valve to reduce pressure on the compressor. Should have the same effect though
But it gives you a fraction of an edge on the beginning before you hit 4k in that scenario. So you have a faster start.
“pass”? Is that American English for overtake?
usually we hang our balls out the window as we overtake, which makes it a pass.
Or when we’re being family-friendly, we just press or hang a “full moon”. We’re not savages, after all.
It’s a sign of trust
Didn’t realize that term wasn’t used in British English.
I was wondering why you had to turn the air conditioning off just to be able to drive past someone.
I bought a used electric car. I just put my foot down and it goes … Well, it doesn’t go voom, it just goes. Might squeel the tires a little, but otherwise silent power.
Same. I switched 13 years ago and for the life of me cannot understand why more people didn’t make the same switch. It’s so cheap
This would be how I feel driving my Miata if my Miata came with AC. I just don’t attempt to pass.
I had a mk1 mx5 (actually a JDM import eunos) and it was a 1.8L variant and it absolutely could overtake things effectively with the AC on. It was a manual and I absolutely thrashed it. Big grins.
…my ND automatically disengages the compressor under heavy throttle; i’m convinced that my elise compressor is just cosplay…
