Inside a solar powered car window ventilator.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ก.ย. 2017
- I was originally going to use this device to pull out humid air from my car on sunny days, but the failure of the window mechanism prevented its use.
The brushed motor is very efficient. It happily starts at less than half a volt at about 10mA. The solar panel looks like a 2V 100mA type.
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This fan teardown is just an excuse to tell us the car window story. But we don't mind 😀
Dragos Moldovan i agree, also taxes if he makes a video taxes are covered.
2000jago he was only speaking for those of us that don't mind, those who mind don't count.
Uploading at half 6 in the morning, the absolute madman!
Perhaps you just live in a wrong time zone.
half 6 in the morning is the same timezone (UK & surrounding islands) as Clive.
Maybe his broadband is slow and it only completed at 0630
You should have made a video of you taking your car door apart.
Often times in those power window components, there’s a sheer key in the mix that keeps the motor from severely damaging the glass should it bind. Just a suggestion to look for a cheap piece of plastic that’s broken in the mechanism.
Pretty sure the motor is an RF-300, the most common small motor EVER.
You will find those things everywhere as they are incedibly efficent.
"Not for use in the rain", well, that rules out its use in the UK... :P
I'm sure cars don't get as much heated inside when parked in the UK compared to some other really warm places
Good question
Sometimes when the window glass slams down into the door like that,it will shatter. Also a note about safety,to anyone who tinkers with a power window..be aware of where you stick your hands in there while working. Should the glass suddenly drop like that,and your fingers are in the way..well,I'm sure you can imagine. The metal edges of the door can be quite sharp,and the glass quite heavy. Not to mention the scissor-type action of the 'pantograph-ish' part.
How new is your vehicle? Most 2000's and upwards vehicles have protection to keep from damaging anything if there's something hindering the window traveling fully upwards, even if there's an "ice breaking" option. You sure you can't find the re-calibration method to reset your window?
Summary: broke fan, broke car, broke everything.
Air conditioning is great if you have it. AC gets rid of humidity really quickly. My old Vauxhall Zafira's AC was working without any servicing at 160,000 miles.
If ventilation is a problem, check the cabin filter. Poor air flow when the fan is on high usually means the cabin filter has been neglected. Cabin filters are just like engine air filters, but can be well hidden. Changing the cabin filter on the Zafira myself cost me £11 instead of paying a garage £40 to do it for me. Top Tip: When you do this job for the first time, do not do it on a cold November evening in the dark. :-)
In 1986, I drove a 1971 Chevrolet Kingswood station wagon from Pennsylvania to Nevada. It was a great vehicle made to travel long distances at high speeds. So, as you can imagine, I used it to race the local teenagers through the desert. I even won a few races.
Anyway...
One evening, a car pulled up next to me and revved it's engine. Of course i took this as a challenge. I was just coming from a job so my toolbox was in the back of the station wagon. -- _I was an A/V tech with Las Vegas convention services, at the time._ -- The light turned green. I hit the accelerator. The tool box, which was loaded with gear, slid into the rear door of the station wagon, shattering the glass and releasing the rear door. The race was over before it had begun
I found a replacement door at a local junk yard. Instead of just swapping out the glass, I chose to replace the entire door.
That was the year I learned about automobile wiring. Never again.
The mechanism that moves the glass is called a window regulator, the clamps that connect it to the glass are called sashes, & the membrane between the interior door panel and the door is usually called the water deflector or insulator on much older vehicles. 😊
3 minutes of how a window works,and the punch line:"I siliconed it up".😂
The window regulator setup you describe sounds a lot like what i've seen on some volkswagens. They are prone to fraying cables which snap and drop the glass.. and as you described, you have to take the whole lock assembly off with the regular as one piece. It's a pain, but after having had to do this 4 times on cars i've owned, I think i have it down now.
You beat me to it. I was planning to look at the same thing :D. Great video as always
Today my car was 57 C inside and 36 C outside. Spring is so mild and wonderful. Humidity bucket thingys are where it's at. Keeps the mould out.
I 'fixed' my car window in a similar way but using a mole grip to keep the mechanism jammed in the up position!
Oh man, This takes me back. My dad had one of these for his service van along time ago. It quit working so I took it apart to tinker with it. It was probably the first thing electronic I fixed... Ah, the good old days.
Had that happen on my '99 VW Passat. Sounds like you're describing the same thing. Hard to remove trim, sheathed wire, pantograph. But perhaps most or all car doors look the same inside. In my case, the small plastic clips that held the glass in place had become brittle due to aging, and simply shattered. No spare parts available, so I just used a metal rod and cable ties to jam the window all the way up... :)
This may be an old video, but I'm so happy to see you ripped it apart. My father had me take a look at his, so I saw it was simply a corroded wire, guess the guy who owned it before the second hand store sold it had it in water, guess maybe a rainy driving day or two. Either way, I added two additional solar panels from yard lights [the panels that are a slight brown color] and then a capacitor from an old ATX power supply 250V at 400 uF and it worked like a dream in low light, and obviously all better lighting conditions. Great little fan, until my father left it on the back deck of the car, and got direct sun on a 35C summer day in Manitoba.....oh well, it looked good and functioned well...until it's death.
It's a bit late now you've siliconed the window up, but had you considered wind deflectors? They let me drop the glass a tiny bit to let air circulate while I'm at work. Works great when it's a little damp inside from wet shoes. It can pour down and it would only get wet inside if it was somehow raining upwards.
When I was working in Dubai , this was a must get item , if you park in direct sunlight your car temperature inside can reach 90c , with this little thing can improve things alot .
“That was the start of a very long and wet evening”
Poor Clive 😑
That's what she said 😏
would it work to go through the air system of the car to get the air out? hook up the fan to the car's air outlets, close the other outlets and let it blow the hot air out? Or is it somehow valved/one-way for the AC system?
You might want the check out the new wera insulated screwdrivers. They have the insulation flush with the tip, so theyre great for any task.
Very pleased and in somewhat awe that you corrected your 'centrifugal' force error! Not alot of Sparkies know that! 😉
These things were on special offer, I bought half a dozen. Reckoning to fit three on the top of each of the back doors of the car. Leave them installed through the summer, and it wouldn't matter which way round I was parked.
They don't work, simple as. In the brightest of sun, the fan whizzes round of course, but the car also heats up at the fastest rate. Even with five of these things on one side of the car, it had no effect on the temperature inside.
With the fan at high speed, there is no noticeable flow of air to the outside.
The reason is clear when you look at it in detail. For any gas to flow freely, it has to "see" no obstruction from the fan to the final exhaust, and there should only be very gradual changes in direction, preferably none at all. This design fails on both counts. The air faces an instant obstruction at the circular aperture of the fan as it blows into a 'wall' of plastic. So there's just an area of turbulent, slightly high pressure air at the very start. That then has to flow inside a thin but wide channel, and then reverse direction in two right angle turns.
Think of an exhaust fan in a toilet, and how powerful that is. It blows into a straight length of tube only the thickness of the wall, and it takes maybe 5 minutes to do a single complete change of air. A toilet cubicle is roughly the same volume as the inside of a car, so to do the job properly you really need a fan with a similar capacity to the toilet (bathroom) fan.
After all this blah, I wonder if they are really meant to blow INTO the car? Nope, I'm looking at the box, and it says "blows hot air out of parked car". mmm... I reckon reversing the flow would be a thing to do. The fan will then "see" no obstruction at all, and there'd be a partial vacuum behind it. Flow then is dependent on the cross sectional area only. Thinks...
Nah, it really is crap, swapping polarity works better, a little. Although my previous is slightly in error, there is an impellor, not a fan. It looks like it should work, but when you hang it on a window, the glass blocks the flow of air. The supplied strip of "rubber" that infills the rest of the window opening for security, that doesn't fit a normal thickness of glass either.
nicktecky55
Seems like you may be better off with some of those simple window vents that are held in place at the top of the aperture by the window but are just a mesh. At least you may get some natural airflow through the vehicle.
Pete Allum
Yep, just about anything really. I left out that if there's the slightest breeze, and the car is side on to it, then the fan can't cope with the pressure drop one side of the vehicle to the other. But I thought that might be rubbing it in a bit! My other car, which is mine but the mem sahib took it over has those plastic draught excluding doodahs on the front windows. So you can leave the windows open securely.
Wind deflectors ordered from eBay, £35.
The fan doesn't pull enough wattage to do jack and that itty bitty solar panel isn't up to the task either. It's just a gimmick thing mom will buy as a gift when shopping, but it turns out completely useless in all practicality.
Thought they'd be useless when I first saw them 15 or so years back. To say the least, they didn't last more than a summer in Australia before dissapearing. A high capacity computer server fan (around 800mah at 12v) would work better as a ventilator, coupled with a 13 watt (1 Amp) solar panel on the car. Used one of those fans in a home made aircooler using an aspen shavings cooling panel. Cooled the car even on the 40+celcius days. Used a small solar powered water pump, powered via a usb port, circulate water through the panel. The whole thing was set up in a rectangular styrofoam esky from a fruit and veg shop.
The other option is the silver window covers or inserts, they go some way to helping and have found them useful. Also slows the cold penetration in winter, if sleeping in your vehicle.
Other option, is park in the shade..😜
The inside of the car needs to be shaded as well.
Last time I had an issue with a power window, which was a long time ago now, I just went to a local pick a part junkyard, drilled out the rivets on the mechanism, took the whole mechanism from the junked card, drilled out the rivets in my car and then bolted in the new mechanism. I don't think it cost more than $20.
Plus the junkyard car lets you practice taking off the door panel. ;)
The motor looks identical to the vibration motors used in gaming controllers. Thanks for another interesting video Clive
Nissan have a little solar panel in the rear spoiler on the Leaf, it runs the cabin fan on intake to do this when the car exceeds a certain temp. Cool stuff!
That's a nice simple idea.
@@jwalker7567
Have a newer Prius with the same thing. I imagine you could make the argument for both, battery's don't care much for anything above 40c and neither do the human occupants. But it's not a standard option so it's probably more for humans, although the battery benefits too as the vents are on either side of the back seat.
hi clive, any chance of you doing a teardown on aluminium pcb?
Just put a drip/rain guard on and crack the windows. Convection will exhaust more heat. Keeps my truck cool in summer here when it is 98F.
@tiporari
Can you explain? I want to sleep occasionally in my car. TY
I've been saving old and broken electronics lately in hopes to create something useful. Thanks for all your videos. 😁👍
I had one and it didn't work too well, I would replace the fan inside with a high powered one from a computer and get a foldable solar panel to power it $50-90 on amazon.
I'd look for one with the anti glare treatment and place it behind the rear passenger headrests
A little condensation in cars is normal but you should check the door seals and the scuttle drainage if its a a big problem. the heater matrix is another possible source, I really hope its not that
It's not too bad. The main problem is that this is a very wet/humid climate.
Not only the door seals. Check the plastic membrane that's usually fitted between door and door card, particularly if the door's ever been worked on - IME mechanics rarely reinstate it properly. As for the heater matrix, any hint of the very characteristic smell of antifreeze in the cabin is a dead giveaway.
When you're elbow deep in the door looking for what broke, keep an eye out for anything pink. Those seem to be the first things to break. Oddly enough I'm not (entirely) kidding here. Dodge/Chrysler vehicles from the mid 2000s (when owned by mercedes) used a plastic transmission interlock affectionately called "the pink thingy". It was a known fail point that was even covered by a recall. Once it broke you couldn't shift your transmission out of park. And as strange as it may seem it was NOT made in china. Go figure. :)
I guess that was their answer to years of minivans without a brake shift interlock, and all the lawsuits they received over unattended children shifting Mommy's Grocery Getter into gear and getting hurt.
Can you disassemble of a Acurite Professional 5 in 1 weather sensor?
Thanks for sharing 😀👍
Thanks for the strip down I have the same problem, I love stripping things for parts, I have real problems putting them back together, but that's just the fun of exploring minds.
I got two of those fans from a company called Coopers of Stortford around 10 years ago, they sold them for ventilating cars with dogs in. The air flow is absolutely pathetic to say the least. I gave one away the other I still have in it's original box. wonder if the solar cells are better than those on the power banks which dont seem to produce as much power as the flashing led's that show the solar cell is working and flatten the battery when "charging in the sun".
For the pedantic, the type of cable you describe (frequently used to shift gears on bikes, some bike brakes, and on the throttle cable(s) on motorbikes) is called a Bowden cable.
Can I use in this fan battery 12 volt?
Does your window switch have the feature where it clicks a step further and raises the window completely for you? Because if you installed this device and then did not reprogram the regulator it could not possibly account for the item in the window and would try to crush it.
Window Fan: 1
Window Internal Parts: 0
Hey Clive awesome video man. Here is ha good question for you on the solar panel. Being that the top part there Pushes air outside. It looks like it could block some of the Solar panel. And voltage and everything goes down. What do you think?
Does it remove smell from your car
These are next on to useless to cars with power windows (as you've discovered) or very curved leading edges on window glass. I used a unit exactly like this on an old Holden Camira (think 80s Vauxhall Cavalier) with wind-up windows and a straight edge to the back window glass and it worked fine BUT it didn't have enough guts to replace the air volume fast enough to prevent mega warming in the hot Aussie summer sun. So then I tried two of them attached to both back doors...a real improvement. I can't use these devices on my new car due to the window detent motor trigger the car alarm and the curvature of the glass. Why car makers don't offer solar-powered air pumps is beyond me. The solar panels could be embedded in the roof or, in the case of sedans, in the real parcel shelf. Removing the hot air would make the job of the car's air conditioner so much easier on start up.
Rear windows open, AC on full. Start driving and the cold air comes in whilst the hot is vented out the back.Not hard.
Assuming the ambient air is cooler. In Australia in summer sometimes this is not the case.
I do the same as you for my car. Two large 1kg bags of the silica gel balls. Works fine for me.
Happens more often then you think on many different brand cars. The reason being very simple: cost/manufacturing issues. The mechanism very often consists of cable and plastic components. Most often these plastic imponent will fail. It's most of the time not very difficult to replace it all. But look in a manual or the internet BEFORE disassembly . Because the easy way is NOT obvious most of the times. I had to do this job on several cars of different brands, german/french makes it much of a difference. It really is more easy to repair then to seal.
I thought of getting one of those, but seeing how cheaply they are made I decided to go with a different setup.
on every sedan or coupe beneath the carpet in the trunk you'll find some flaps that lead outside. A few minutes of work and you can install a small fan over this flap. I have the fan powered by a chinesium solar panel and battery setup. add a thermal switch between the fan and battery and it works wonders.
YES OMG I suggested this above... It makes so much sense to me, the ducting is already built in, and it's probably ten times more effective than the over-the-window units!
Could you do a salvaged component build project?
Clive, I'm surprised we didn't get any analysis on the motor or the solar panel. What voltage and power is generated? What speed does the fan turn at? What is the flow rate of the air by the fan in bright sunlight?
I had one of these in New Zealand from K_Tel marketing back in 1987. Cars tended to not have AC back then and cheesy solutions like the solar fan were quite popular.
The seal I received for my 2012 VW did not work, it kept popping off. Even if it did work, it would not have sealed it off all the way because the fan hits the top of the door using my automatic window closer and opens up immediately when the fan hits the top of the gasket around my window. So instead, I tried to use the foam insulator for water pipes, large size and it works good and slides on real easy. Have to buy the foam tomorrow, large foam instead of what I have been using now which is the insulator for small pipes.
I have one, airflow is awful but it helps keep the temperature down which is it's job, you put it in the window and instead of it being boiling it is cooler, butbjust keeping your windows open a crack helps more than this anyway
This might actually be useful with the addition of a LiPo battery and a microcontroller. I can't imagine running it while the sun beats down having much impact, but storing power and running it in the pre-dawn hours might help with morning condensation or frost.
Given that AC isn't something that's widespread in the UK (based on my understanding), I was curious if cars had it for that Defrost purpose to solve the fogged up windows you describe?
Since cars already have vent fans, what we need is an add-on kit that mounts a solar panel someplace and connects into the vent fan controls and runs them if there's sunlight.
I've taken one of those apart before.. the solar panel was actually not good enough to even make the motor spin and when checking the voltage in direct sunlight it only was getting 0.3 volts, so it's a good thing I found it in the garbage and didn't actually waste money on it.
If you're talking about a plastic piece, usually tacked onto the doorskin by tape or glue, I've heard it called a "water vapor barrier".
You should get a French car. Not that it's easy to access anything, but they generally fall apart fast enough that you can just wait for better access.
Shitting Peugeots!
Classic, I couldn't tell where that comment was going till the very last word! Give that man a banana!
@Против Глобал citroen and peugeot are good cars depending on the model
The name you were looking for is door panel, sometimes called a door card but that does'nt sound right, the bulkhead is the steel panel between the engine bay and the passenger compartment.
The cable type is called a Bowden cable. Much used for cycle brakes and clutch cables for example.
I still have one that i bought agesssss ago
havent used it in quite a while but it still works
Clive (or anyone else tbh) ! I'm looking to buy a power bank, and since I consider you the authority on powerbank safety, what should I avoid? I dont really want to be blown up, or catch fire. For example, a £7.00 morrisons brand power bank. Would that be dangerous?
The inside is normally called the door card.
TheChloeRed English is indeed a door card.
I think he was referring to the metal panel behind the door card with all the annoyingly small holes to work on the mechanism
Vapor barrier?
That's the smuggle compartment drugs, money, etc...bugclive is smuggling electronics or booze. Haha
He was refering to the part under the door panel/card. The plastic film style is known as a vapor barrier in the US. It is stuck on with a black tar like substance. But european cars are starting to go with a bolt on style plastic piece, which the window regulator and other parts actually attach to. We refer to this as a vapor barrier as well, but I would guess that there is a more proper name for it.
They don't move enough air to do any good. They let more moisture in overnight than they ever pull out in a week. We have the same problem on the BC coast but also get the low temperatures so you end up with frost on the outside and the inside of the window.
Thanks for the video. I almost bought this but will look for something else.
How effective was it?
Condensation is stuff you get on bathroom mirrors, you actually get it inside cars?
It's so dry in Australia I had a couple of oranges escape from my shopping bag a few years back, I found them under the front seat a few months later, tiny shrunken oranges, still orange, still round but about 1/3 the size and as hard as a billiard ball.
It's common after a hot sunny day followed by a very cold night to literally find all the windows inside the car streaming with water.
Blimey, that must be tough on the interior fabrics with moulds and stuff, not to mention the electronics. You would almost need anti-condensation heaters in your cassette player ;-)
Cheers, Ray
The window mechanism on my Father in-law's Citroen Picasso rusted out and snapped, so I spent about 8 hours installing a new one he'd bought only for it to fail again two years later. This time we bought a whole door from Ebay for the same price and had it installed and working within an hour!
Whole door! Now there's an idea.
Is it a Skoda Felicia you have? (think you mentioned it in another video) If so, the doors are about £30-35 on Ebay.
How do you post a big heavy car door. Postage must cost more than the door as it might have to sent on a pallet?
BE sent....
If it's a common enough car there's usually a vehicle dismantler local enough that you can pick it up yourself. However, there's some large vehicle dismantlers who pretty much make all of their income of Ebay sales and they often have reasonable postage prices.
I had one of these. It melted when the sun shifted to the other side of the car. They are very cheap. I was thinking about building one with a larger panel stronger fan and battery backup.
For removing the hot glue to detach the solar panel (unless you already did this) and for future hot glue removal, put some cleaning alcohol on the glue's edge and start lifting the glue off. The alcohol will flow under and detach it in a matter of seconds with very little effort. If the glue sticks a lot, put more alcohol on.
Those window regulator mechanism have got to be the most unreliable part of any modern car. I've replaced the one in the driver's door of my car four times. I now keep a screwdriver and a piece of wood in the trunk (boot) that's just the right length to jam the window glass all the way up, because it *will* fail again, and it *will* be pouring rain.
Since these appeared in commercials in the 1990s here in the US, I'd always wondered what kind of value proposition could have been presented by the owner(s) of this device to the various auto manufacturers ( maybe a licensing deal with each competitor? ) , to list a similar function as a purchase option installed alongside the automobile's climate controls where it could source air from the existing fresh air ductwork.
Solar cells of that size and output were cheap as were the motors.
Vehicles would've been kept secure as well instead of what I recollect coming up in conversation / news outlets as the weak point of entry for a vehicle theft or the contents therein.
It's okay, Clive. I'm younger than 25 and I still know what a Cassette Deck is. I still use them too!
"That was the start of a very, very long and wet evening." I love it when you talk dirty BigC!
a drone motor would fit or one of those cheap helicopters, they run at low voltage and at the most are 1/4" wide and 1/2 inch long at the most. Work fine with a solar panel up to 3 volts. Might need 2 of them but cheaper than buying a dedicated case apart from the the window fit unless you have a 3d printer :-)
Would that solar panel really provide enough power to run the motor?
Someone should make one that goes over the vent in the car that draws are in. I guess you need to close the other vents and make sure external air is set.
Cassette deck? Must be a reference to something Bigclive saw on Dr who. 😂
was the spudger at anytime used on your car window/door panel predicament? sadly, the spudger didn't see any action with that auto fan. did i mention the absence of the spudger in this video?
Unfortunately.... the spudger remained in hiding.
Cliiiiiiiive, I'm trying to fall asleep!
Chris K. So this is annoying?
I think I had something similar in the 90'. Perhaps it was the Australian summer, perhaps it was the large inclined windows on front & rear, or perhaps it was my expectations, or perhaps even all of the aboves, but I didn't find it very effective at all...
Can you put a microwave VENT that sucks air out of a car outside ?? Thinking that might help during covid19 Lyft/Uber rides.. kinda dumb question but w.e😎
what car do you have? it sounds like your windows do not have obstruction detection!
if that works to cool the car. why brands do not implement it better, direct in car factory?
It would cost money, so they would list it as an extra at 10x the cost of the actual price and nobody would pay for it.
Both my old BMW had this function, it would automatically turn on the AC with fan only when you reach certain temps
Audi had (has?) an option on some models to include solar cells in the sunroof to drive the ventilation when parked. The added cost was just a touch over the sunroof itself (for some stupid reason my S6 has the sunroof but not the solar cells).
So yeah, it's available (or at least used to).
When the car was stationary?
Stationary and locked.
Clive and Jamie Hyneman, Adam Savage.
They could really dig up some fun stuff.
That would be a fun show.
Door trim can be a pain, I worked for Road Radio, along with sunroofs, radios, we also fitted electric windows way back in the 90’s.
If your vehicle is an older Renault, a novice should forget removing it with a successful outcome lol..
It might be easier to take a trip to the breakers yard and just grab a door with working window and just swap the lock barrel over.
We used to get a silicone lubricant for the rubber window runners.
Going home late last night.... Yeah Clive looked through the window and surprised what he saw..... Window fan dancing witha window motor YEAH!!
Lol Black Sabbath does seem to apply here!!
You know that it's going to be a good video when Big Clive gets his notepad out.
nice! i was lookin for this vid.. teardown auto cool.. 👍
Luckily Ive bought 3 of the same model of car over the past 10 years and I like changing stereos so after doing it so many times I can get the interior door panel off one of my cars in about 5 minutes.
What car do you have?
Would have been interesting to see how fast the motor would spin installed (and how much air it moved).
holy shit I totally forgot these were a thing. I bought one about 10 years ago and it really helped keep the car cool in the Texas summer heat. But I didnt leave mine installed all the time. I only put it on when i parked.
3:13 the vapor shield?
Great video.can u do a video on how if you put a led on a motor and spin it fast how the led light.explaining how it works thanks.love your channel
Motors are generators. Stepper motors are particularly good for generating power.
i've replaced the regulators in both back doors on my Durango. No appeal to me for permanently sealing the window closed, as I do sometimes want ro air my truck out, and things that don't work drive me nuts!
I was expecting you to describe exactly how and why the fan had damaged your window mechanism Clive
The panel on the inside of the car door is called a "door card" and the metal cable with the sheath on the outside is called a "Bowden cable"
Doesn't the motorized car-windows have child-protection mechanisms that make them stop closing when encountering resistance?
I have seen some of these in super hot areas, so that the fan will take some of the heat out of the car when parked without the "window down". But you wouldn't want to leave it in all year round if you live where there is snow either because blowing snow will fill into the car for sure though that opening, I have seen snow in my old car when I lived in the windy snowy Wyoming winters and it would even get in though the heating vents. The "don't use in rain" is a cover their ass massage because there is no real "seal" ether and they don't want to repair water damage cars from people who leave them in all the time.