Water Jets

[bazzaric]

The car became pretty useless over the weekend as I was up in Aviemore and knee deep in snow. Managed to drive back to Aberdeen yesterday, but had to get a bottle of water and spray the window from the driver side! Pretty dangerous with overturned cars, etc at the side of the road!!

So here's my question, how can I stop this freezing all the time? I literally put pins down the jets and they work once. Then, within a minute they are frozen again and unusable. The window was completely manky, and all the dirt from the road kept reducing my visibility to 0. Had to keep stopping to fill up the water bottle.

Can you get aftermarket heated jets?
The anti-freeze i'm using is meant to be good to -11 degrees. Unfortunately Aviemore was -18 but even at around 0, it was still freezing constantly.

[Scottie]

In our days of driving at -21c at Muir of Ord we had to pretty much put full strength window washer fluid with not a lot of water in the mix the ready mixed was rubbish.

[bazzaric]

Ah...up in the Muir! The love of my life's cousin is from there.... albeit the love of my life is now my ex!!

[MrMischief]

Can you get aftermarket heated jets?
The anti-freeze i'm using is meant to be good to -11 degrees. Unfortunately Aviemore was -18 but even at around 0, it was still freezing constantly.

I can't answer your question for sure about aftermarket heated jets, but I don't see why not.

The spray freezes at zero due to small atomised water particles having a large surface area & cooling down quickly with the wind chill factor associated with moving at speed - and the outer surface of your windscreen will be pretty cold.

I'd recommend that if you can't get aftermarket heated jets, increase the concentration of your anti-freeze, or run it neat and also always have the hot air directed at your screen.

[mikeythemini]

Mini do a heated jet retro fit kit for 1st gen - think it was quite cheep to

[bazzaric]

Thanks everyone. I tried clearing them again this morning and just squirting until it ran out. Unfortunately, the jets started spraying fine then gradually dropped. I can hear the pump working, but it seems more like they are getting clogged. I think the spray is dripping a wee bit, and this is freezing

[Gismo]

You can try methylated spirit in the reservoir, don't do your wiper blades much good, but, it won't freeze

[Stewart]

Have to say it’s the one aspect of my Mini I’m disappointed in. it does not have the side Mirrors defrost and I don’t like opening the door for the window to auto open and close that inch in frost………..the other car is a new Focus and you basically set the time you want to leave ie 7;30AM and its good to go with rear,front and side mirrors clear without leaving the house and the car is even warm…………all without leaving the house…….

You want to impress your neighbours have a car that defrosts itself on the drive, all it needed to do was phone the house to say it was ready and I’d not put that past them.

[ELFMAN]

I have the heated jets, but still have to watch the mixture strength in the cold weather, as it'll freeze in the pipes. Got caught out one day last week... eejit. Only thing to do is to use a really strong (ie barely diluted) fluid.