My husband’s from PA, and he’ll do this if the car really gets warm. At home we rarely need to do it, but when we’re on vacation, it can happen.
Heck, that happens in Cleveland, too, in the three sunny days of summer.
@InternetLegend , anyone who’s capable of taking advantage of a half-inch gap in the window to steal a car is also capable of doing nearly the same thing with a car whose windows are all the way up.
I think some people are getting confused here by talking about rolling the windows down just before getting in. That’s not going to do much.
Let’s say it’s a hot day and you need to park in an unshaded car park while grabbing groceries.
Scenario 1: you leave all the windows closed. When you return to the car, the steering wheel is too hot to touch, and your back is immediately sweating from the heat of the seat. You need to open all the doors to try to get the temperature to equalize, and wait.
Scenario 2: You leave one of the windows opened just an inch or so, as you go do your shopping. On returning to your car, it’s hot of course, but not too much to grab the wheel and immediately start driving.
The point is, you’re not letting the interior get too hot in the first place.
And, if you’re worried about thieves while your car is unattended, note that attempting to push down the glass would be far more trouble than just doing a smash and grab.
Also, leather seats? A year-round mistake in my book.
Cloth seats are the only solution in the heat. Seat heaters are the only solution in the cold.
Yeah, I’ve pretty much given up the fight. If he’d stick to a half-inch gap, I’d feel better, but he usually rolls out down a good 3 - 4 inches (it looks like less from inside the car). We’ll just have to fall back on how to load the dishwasher for a familiar debate. And yes, Albuquerque’s car thieves don’t stand on ceremony. It’s customary to come out to find only a heap of glass where you parked your car.
We have a complex web of car shades we put up if we can’t park in shade. I love how a fastback looks, but not so much how fast it heats the car up.
Said another way, keeping the windows fully rolled up or only slightly rolled down is pointless. If they want the stuff you left in sight or they want the whole car they just use their crowbar as a master key to open the window then reach for the door handle.
Maybe. I’ve seen a fail video of someone trying to break a car window with a crowbar, it bouncing off and beaning them in the forehead.
Not what I was looking for, but in the same category:
Is it worth cracking the window (1/4" - 1/2") in hot weather when parking or just leave the windows rolled all the way up?
I remember the vinyl seats in the 1970s and if you were wearing shorts and sat on them it felt like your skin was burning away. Leather, somehow, didn’t feel as bad.
Maybe I’m thinking of vinyl. It’s been a minute. Either way, big ouchie.
FWIW, putting the top down briefly in a convertible really allows the whole “hot air rises” thing work in your favor.
I do the same in the momvan [has a sunroof] but can only crack windows in the cruze [no sunroof] Of course, when I drove the international harvester Scout in the summer, no roof =)
I used to photograph my church’s parking lot in order to know which angle which trees would cast shadows at what time in the afternoon, so as to know where to park in advance.
I recall reading about some well-meaning-but-ignorant parents who would leave kids in the parking lot but roll down the window 1 inch, then feel satisfied that they’d struck a compromise - “don’t need to bring kids with me, the inch gap keeps them cool, thieves can’t break in”
A study somewhere showed that doing so made only a 2-degree difference; IIRC, 117 vs 115 Fahrenheit.
I suppose it varies greatly on whether there is a wind and how the car is aligned to it.
With no wind I’d agree that “cracked” windows are close to useless. With some wind they’re more useful, but probably not enough to prevent cooking kids and dogs given enough time. Where “enough” is far shorter than most people might expect.
Still, I’d not be surprised to find research that cracked widows plus wind = perceptibly cooler car upon your return. Still darn hot, but better. And of course a 3" tall opening on four windows is far better than a 1/4" tall opening on two or worse yet one window. I certainly used to do exactly that and IMO/IME avoided the worst of Phoenix or Las Vegas summers in my cars that way.
There are devices like this that supposedly move enough air from inside to out to make a real difference. I have my doubts; I never owned one.
I really dislike getting into a super hot car. Summers get very hot in Melbourne, Australia, easily around 100 F (38 C). I do what many posters recommend, and put a reflective shade on the inside of the windscreen. (Yes, OK, it would be better on the outside, but that’s not how the shade attaches.) I also put up the sunroof a little to allow hot air to escape.
My father, who was an air conditioning engineer, made the following suggestion. When you first switch on the AC, turn it onto outside air (i.e. not recirculating) for a few minutes. I think his reasoning was that the AC is not trying to cool the hot air inside the car, and/or this hot air can be exhausted from the car more readily. When you feel the AC blowing cooler air, switch it back to recirculating.
All you engineering Dopers, tell me where I’m going wrong – knock yourselves out!
I really wanted those window fans to work, but all of the tests I’ve seen say they do not make enough difference to matter. Here is some random one that found a two degree difference with and without the fan—117 to 115. Apparently the small fans do not move enough air.
My solution is a few minutes before I need to drive to use the button in the app to put the windows into vent position and then turn on the AC. The hardest part is remembering to do it.
Remember that searing feeling.
Growing up in the Aust regions, summer temperatures can peak above 40C for days at a time and if you were unable to get the vehicle under the shade the vehicle temperatures would get well into the lethal zone.
A common means of cooling was to go swimming and it was fair game, on returning to the car, to use the damp towels as seat covers to prevent backs and legs being scorched from the overheated vinyl.
The usual technique we used to cool the car is to drive off with the passenger front and driver rear windows right down. Also only turn the A/C on once parity with the ambient temperature was reached.
One of the local city councils found they had a problem in the summer because car interior could get so hot that the thermal paper used to issue parking tickets, when left as stipulated on the front dashboard, would become activated and unreadable. Get one scorching day, keep the illegible ticket handy and in good nick and patrons could use that ticket to park for free the rest of the summer.
actually your supposed to leave the windows open a crack so the hot air doesn’t form enough pressure to blow out the windows