Repairing cars logically, buying new parts to replace old ones, isn’t nearly as fun as DIY’ing yourself a cheaper solution.
When you live in snowy climes, having a working heating system in your car is a must, so when Redditor Quisha’s windshield defroster started acting up and the correct fix involved opening up the dashboard, not to mention a $60 part, Quisha did the next best thing, he DIY’d himself a fix that would make any bush mechanic proud.
Check out his post below along with his genius fix that’s sort of self-explanatory.
Blend door actuator: $60. PVC piping: $8.50. Being able to defrost the windshield again: priceless. from r/Justrolledintotheshop
This is one of those a picture is a thousand words posts because Quisha doesn’t give much backstory to his predicament, but does he have to? A broken blend door actuator is an annoying problem, but not the end of the world, because at least his Subaru GL’s heater core and water pump is still routing hot coolant without leaks. Presumably, hot air is blowing out somewhere, just not on his windshield where he needs it the most on cold mornings.
I looked up how to diagnose and probably fix his problem on a similar Subaru around the same year and, at most, he could probably fix his blend door actuator in an afternoon.
But then again, he wouldn’t have a sweet story to share with us.
It looks like all he did was cut up some PVC pipes and affixed those pieces onto 90 degree PVC bends. A couple of drilled holes on the length of the PVC routes hot air from those front facing vents onto his windshield.
It’s a simple yet effective solution. I imagine once his windshield is clear of moisture and interior temps have warmed up enough, like some steering wheel lock, he can stuff his PVC solution behind his front seat until he needs it again.
If he really wants to class his defrost loophole a bit, a quick spray with flat black paint might make this fix a tad more asthetically pleasing.
Hats off to you because this is redneck engineering at its best.
