Hey Matt, did you freeze today?

For anyone that does not know, Matt has complained in the past that his
heating and AC are marginal in extreme temperatures. This morning was the
lowest temperature since I've had my Sonata, at -9°. It was warm and comfy.
The engine did growl a bit starting up, but in seconds smoothed out. Ohhhh,
those heated seats are nice too!

 

I've been driving my old Chevy truck all week and was nice and toasty.
Had the heater on the second speed for a while the day it was -9 here,
but I got so hot I had to turn it back to low.

I drove the Sonata last night to pick up my wife from about 15 miles
away. Had the heater on speed 2 and still couldn't get the front
cleared from the windshield and side windows. Ran it on 3 on the way
home and still couldn't get the top 1/3 of the windshield frost-free and
had to duck my head to see to drive. What a crappy HVAC system. Well,
at least I have my 15 year-old truck for the cold weather.

I still wonder if it is a 4 cylinder vs. V-6 issue, but nothing could
ever be found wrong with my heater or AC. It seems to meet the specs,
but doesn't work worth crap. Well, at least not compared to my other
cars. It is a lot better than my two VW Beetles were. I had REAL
Beetles (1971 and 1975) not these new ones that DO have heaters and
defrosters.

So, the Sonata doesn't have the worst HVAC that I've ever owned, but
only the Beetles were worse.

Matt

P.S. It is -12 this morning. The wife and I are going out for
breakfast and, yes, I'm taking the truck even though it means hauling
the low around.

 

I meant plow, hauling the plow around. It is so cold here that my
keyboard won't even work properly! Although it is now up to -4 so it
feels pretty good out, especially with the sun shining.

 

I don't know what the difference is, but mine has been fine. There was frost
on the windshield and the defroster cleared it up in a couple of minutes,
outside and inside. Leaving the house there was still a band at the top,
but by the time I got to the main street it was gone.

Never had a Beetle, but I had a '64 and a '70 Karmann Ghia. On the 64 the
heater tubes were rusted away. I carried an ice scraper for the inside.
The '70 was better but nothing like a real heater. My '62 Corvair had good
heat year round. Had to block the vents in summer. Well, I think it was
better. Back in the 60's my body could take the temperature extremes a
little easier than today.

 

I really thought the mouse nest I found on top of the cabin air filter
was the culprit, but removing that and installing a new filter made
little difference. I could detect more airflow this summer from the AC,
but the overall cooling performance was only slightly improved and I see
no detectable difference in heating performance.

Matt

 

The heat in my 2000 Elantra didn't come on that day (I'm in Maryland). I
was SURE I broke something big...

But, it turned out that I was low on Anti-freeze, and my heater assembly
didn't start.

I added some 50/50 (over a half gallon!) and 20 minutes later, I smelled
heat!! I was VERY relieved...

 

My wifes '06 Elantra has good heat...Nothing like my 95 Silverado
though...It will roast you out...LOL....

 

TheChris wrote:

If you *literally* smelled the heat, I guess that tells us where
the missing anti-freeze went <g>!

 

Hmmmmm... just an observation, but... you "smelled heat", then felt very
releaved? Hell, around here most of us just refer to that as a fart.
Works well to warm the car seat up on those chilly mornings, and is indeed
releaving.

 

Well, it's more like when you're in a room with baseboard heating, or an
iron or a hair dryer on...There's a certain smell that hot air has for
me... It didn't smell like AF, it just was like, 'Hey, that's a different
smell!"

 

I had tried that for hours before...

 

TheChris wrote:

<snipped the crap>


Gawd what a mess X-news makes out of quoted text. Probably why I shit
canned it many years ago after trying it.

 

Yeah, I've been noticing that... I like that I can run it from my USB
stick though

 

If you're somehow attempting to reply to my comment about Xnews, you
should know that Mozilla Thunderbird, as well as Firefox both are
available as portable apps that will run off of a thumb drive. I run
both on a 2GB thumb drive on the work box 10 hours a day, 4 days a week
w/o a hitch.

Google portable apps.

 

Yeah, I use ALL the Portable Apps - even 'Mac on a Stick'

Which are you using as a NewsReader?

 

currently using Thunderbird on this 2 gig stick. nice for work, ya pull
the thign out and no residual left behind for prying eyes i'm using
T-bird also on a linux box as well as the xp boxes and laptop. i've
played with just about all of the newsreader apps over the years. for
solid dependable service T-bird does it for me. may stem back to my
beta testing days of netscape navigator and communicator i haven't
looked but there may even be a sea monkey portable app out there also.
i currently use Pan also. like x-news (IIRC) it handles multi-part
binaries where as T-bird doesn't.

 

Me too... I take Newsreaders VERY personally I only thought
Thunderbird did mail.. Doesn't the mail portion of it bloat up the app?

I grew up with all the Unix apps... vi, edlin - so, I like thing that
look like xnews...I'll look into Pan... Thanks.

 

Some. Price of convenience I suppose. It's certainly not a cpu hog in
any manner.

Ever mess around w/ Tin?
http://www.tin.org/

here's a 'few' others.
http://www.newsreaders.com/unix/utilities.html