are heated ice scrapers worth buying? any recommendations?
I seriously doubt it. But I have never tested one. Maybe they could keep you hands warm.
I’d be afraid of cracking or chipping the glass.
Nope.
I base that opinion on over 40 years of driving in cold climates, including 3 years in North Dakota.
The only heat that helps is heat that can melt the layer between the ice and the glass. The defroster on high is the best thing to do that with. Of course it doesn’t work until the engine warms up.
I have one that I got on sale at some department store ($3.99!) It works great, especially when you’re trying to get off stubborn ice after a good ole Ontario freezing rain storm. If you can find one cheap, get one.
Do these things blow hot air, or what?
No. They just have a sealed heating element just above the edge that scrapes the windshield. At least, that is the way the one I used to have was designed. It didn’t blow hot air.
It worked, but wasn’t very rugged. My unit plugged into the cigarette lighter. The cord wasn’t really very long, so I would have to run the cord out the left window to do that side of the windshield, and then repeat the process on the right side. If I found one for $3.99, I would buy it. I don’t know what happened to the one that I had. It either broke and I threw it away or I misplaced it when I cleaned out my car.
Mine has about an 8 or 10 foot cord that plugs into the lighter socket, so I can easily get to all parts of my windshield. And it has a decent sized heating element just behind the scraper edge that melts the ice as you scrape, making the job many times easier.
That must have been fun. Cord too short to reach. What method did you use to get the ice off the side window in order to open it?
Someone should make a propane-fired one.
I probably meant that I just opened the door. Since I no longer have my heated ice scraper, I just drive blind. I also had a defroster/deicer that was shaped like a hair dryer that plugged into the cigarette lighter and did have a blower. Someone got into my car when it was parked in the married student housing lot at the university I attended and ransacked the glove compartment. The only thing missing was this defroster gun. I didn’t cry a lot, because it never really worked very well. The heated ice scraper that I got later was much more effective.