Winter Woes

Claude said:

I've noticed the fogging up as well, but I usually drive with the air vent set to "circulate" instead of "take (polluted) air from the outside". Making that switch (get air from the outside), setting the vents to send air to the windows and increasing the speed of the fans solves the problem for me. If it didn't, it's possible to start the A/C to speed things along but I haven't gone that far yet.

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PenguinMD said:

With winter in full swing, I've noticed 2 annoying things about this car:

1) The rear side windows have a propensity to fog up, and no cabin air settings seem to alleviate this.
2) Ice easily builds up between the back window and the trunk since the window dips below. There seems to be no good way to clear out this ice without opening the trunk first, but doing so causes the ice to grind up against the window.

Any other winter folks dealing with the same annoyances? Have you guys found a good solution to either problems?

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Claude said:

Oh, I know about recirculated air and humidity! Unfortunately, I have not mastered the art of holding my breath for the duration of my commute.

It's the "fresh" part of "fresh air" that's missing. Stuck in traffic, the air stinks.

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mno86 said:

Honestly, if you have ice and snow in your life, consider investing in snow tires.

I can't articulate enough how much of an impact they make.

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NorthernEX-T said:

Yeah I just turn the a/c on, and no recirculate, on hot, and the windows clear within seconds

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syncro87 said:

On another note, winter tires. I have Yokohama iceGUARD iG52c tires on our 2014 Civic, just swapped them on the other day when it became apparent we had a big storm coming and we had a trip a couple hundred miles away for a family function that I couldn't miss.

I drove from Kansas City to Wichita, KS, and back in some pretty rough conditions. You cover some pretty remote areas on that route, and lots of wind and flat areas combined with temps in the single digits made it near impossible for road crews to keep the highway clear. It was a fairly white knuckle affair, mainly due to poor visibility and also that I'm the only person in Kansas City or south of here running dedicated winter tires. People in this town don't grasp the concept. I'm from the NE USA originally, so I grew up where they were a necessity and still use them.

Anyway, long story short, the car was a total tank in the snow with the iG52c tires. I was far more worried about the other people on the road, most of whom seemed to be running Hoosier racing slicks on their vehicles. Particularly dangerous were the multiple people with TX plates who passed in the half-covered left lane in SUVs at insane speeds. Most of those folks probably rarely see snow, and they were driving WAY too fast for conditions. Heck, I was probably going about at the sane limit, and I only did that because I had winter rubber on the car.

My only small beef with the winter tires on our 9th gen is that on dry pavement at highway speeds, they are a touch squirmy. This is the nature of winter tires, as they really aren't designed for 75 mph dry pavement runs. The rubber is too soft, the tread too deep, and they have a million tiny sipes instead of more stable solid tread blocks. You know this going in, though, so you don't keep the winter tires on the car unless you're going to have consistent crappy weather, or you're too lazy to swap them on and off a couple times over the winter.

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