schwarze

I have an 03 Taurus. The windows fog and will not totally clear. Help!

thefonz

Sounds like the heater core is leaking. Do you smell antifreeze inside the car?

schwarze

No. Pretty sure it is not a heater core. Seems like I am not getting any outside air.

jwko

I used windex instead of the cheap stuff last time I cleaned my windsheild and I am having similar problems. It takes forever to defog and seems to be impossible to defog all the way up.

Does yours look like a haze? When you wipe it does it seem like it just smears like it is greasy? If so its probably the heater core.

tbird100636

You know, if you A/C system is empty, the defroster will not work correctly because the A/C is on when the defroster is on to de-humidify the air in the car so the windows don't fog. If your A/C didn't work this past summer then you have your answer.

RckyMtnTaurus

schwarze,

We have that problem on our 2000 Taurus. After searching alot of people said heater core. However we have no loss of coolant and no smell of coolant. Next, and a more likely culprit was the evaporator core. It is either leaking or blocked. Third option a friend mentioned was the in cabin air filter. Well I tried this one first and it is 85% better. Then again, I should mention that we live in a cold climate and when on the highway, the windows would ice up. Now they are pretty decent. Far from perfect, but still reasonable. It was like a $15 item, the cabin filter, and you can find it under hood at the firewall. There were 3 or 4 clips, 2 screws, and a bit of work with smaller hands. It definitely made a world of difference.

Hope this helps.

Jeff N

schwarze

Thank you! Literally right before I picked this up I was looking in the Haynes manual for this car on how to check this filter. I've been around cars and worked on my own cars my whole life (55) and have trouble believing I have a bad heater core at 32,000 miles and 3 years. Not that it couldn't happen. I have no smell of antifreeze in the cabin and the fog is not slippery or greasy. It only happens when the outside temp is 25 or below which leads me to believe I have some kind of a circulation problem. I also read somewhere on the internet when I first started to research this problem that it was an inherant poblem with these cars. All that being said, I appreciate your response and will check the filter after church in the morning.

RckyMtnTaurus

Just to let you know, I didn't think mine looked all that dirty. Let me know how this helps. BTW, do you live in a wet/frosty/snowy climate? Obviously at 25' it is pretty cold.

schwarze

Indianapolis. Woke up to about 3" of snow this morning. Temperature is 27, still snowing and expecting some freezing rain and sleet before it is all over. Thusday/Friday highs are only going to be in the low 20's.

RckyMtnTaurus

Let me ask you this then. When we drove our Taurus it was pretty ok in the wet cold weather with one or two adults in it. Once you had more than that and hit the highway, the rear windows would fog and ice over as well as the front sides. If you were lucky enough to have half of your front windshield not fog/freeze up, it would freeze up when you pulled into town and slowed down. That was last winter. This fast fall we were getting some slight fogging on the windshield when it got cooler, but we weren't at freezing temperatures. Since changing out that filter the rears might fog up a hair, the fronts and windshield don't fog.

Here's my question... Is this what you are experiencing?


Another thing to try to do is find your AC drain which apparently is at the firewall on the drivers side. I guess its just a hole. Try a coat hanger up there or some compressed air. If its blocked this may cause a buildup of moisture in your system. I haven't tried that since changing the filter seems to cleared up the bulk of my problem. I still plan on finding that drain.... Our weather hasn't been all that nasty yet here, so maybe I will have more issues with fogging. Maybe I have been lucky. However the wife even agrees that I likely found the better part of our Taurus problem.