Rear Defog gets too hot

[SatinSilver]

Hi Guys,

 

I have a 2005 EX and the left side of the rear defogger grid gets way to hot! One frosty Illinois morning I noticed that the left side had large melted areas of frost along the left side of the glass where the grid lines meet the black edge of the glass.. But the right side had the normal & uniform frost melt along the grid lines. When I placed my hand on the left side, the glass was so hot that it cause me to jerk away in reflex..

 

Caveat: I had an accident in this car a couple of years ago and the rear window had to be removed to facilitate the repair (the window was not damaged in the accident).. A few months after the body shop repair,,, winter came. It was then that I noticed that the top 4 or 5 grid lines on the left side no longer worked. (IT WAS WORKING FINE THE PREVIOUS WINTER)

 

So this year I decided to use the liquid metal repair kit and just dobbed on a tiny bit where I thought the grid lines may have been broken. Every since I did that I've been getting the excessive heating of the glass on the left side.. I don't run the defog for fear of something shorting and setting the car alight. Does anyone think it may have been something that the body shop did wrong or was it perhaps the defog repair kit??

 

SatinSilver

IL, USA

[James Matteu]

I thought the repair kits made the defogger less efficient by being a poor conductor relative to the originally painted lines. I guess it depends on what was actually in the repair kit paint.

 

Logically, I would suspect the paint as the approximate cause but the body shop has contributing negligence as the repair wouldn't have been necessary had they not damaged the glass to begin with. Unfortunately, you did not return the vehicle to the body shop and as such they are more than likely held harmless for damages caused by the paint; check your local laws and tort statutes to be sure.

 

Contact the repair kit manufacturer for any warranty info or perhaps a good-faith repair that can be performed.