Bichon

Notwithstanding what your service tech measured, it sounds like the A/C in your IS isn't performing nearly as well mine. On a 90 degree day, mine is blowing adequately cold air in about 30 seconds, and has cooled the cabin to a comfortable temperature within 5-10 minutes.

It's the button on the right, and yes, when recirculate mode is off you are bringing in outside air.

jdanon

I doubt it's a wind chill effect. The wind chill effect affects bodies that produce heat through convection. Your skin is warm, about 91 degrees warm, and so it warms a thin little layer of air right near your skin. When it's windy out this little layer of air that has been warmed above the air temperature is mixed out with the rest of the cold air thus making you feel colder than you would be if the air was perfectly still where only conduction and radiation which are slower processes contribute to you feeling colder.

I would say the best way to test this is just get a regular old mercury thermometer or electronic one and stick it in the air vent for a while. Something that measures the actual temperature of the air and not the net long wave radiation of who knows what.

Old Oiler

You are correct in your description of Wind Chill effect. It has nothing to do with actual temperature. If a plant freezes at 32F, but the actual air temp is 35F, but the wind chill is 29, the plant will not freeze.

I've checked the vents now more than I ever cared to do as I had no intentions of this topic getting into a debate. I've checked against various other substances/devices both with analog and without. I'm not going to even divulge the last temp reading with a conventional thermometer so as to not perpetuate this topic.

Lets just say that there must be something wrong with THIS IS, not yours, but mine and leave it at that and let this thread die. I will even go so far as to request the moderator to terminate it.

Geez man, if I were someone who was trying to raise your dander or start debates on unbelievable things I would have started that a long time ago and you would have quickly labeled me for nothing more than a "troll" and kicked me out from day one.

If the moderator does not terminate this thread, you guys debate away.

I'm....

Over and out,

Old Oiler

IS350jet

I agree, something is amiss. The a/c in my IS will freeze you out of the car yet at its coldest the air temp at the center vent is 39 and outer vents is 44. Thermometers cannot pick up wind chill factors. Also, infrared or laser thermometers are notorious for being extremely unreliable.

nrsk4u

I think im gona have to get one of thoes toys!!

jdanon

That's why any temperature measurements are always done with an electronic or mercurial thermometer. Accurate to within tenths of a degree and can measure the mean temperature of a fluid. If we measured air temperature with an IR thermometer, temperatures would fluctuate wildly. Temperature readings for something on the microscale that an IR thermometer measures are practically useless. In a car with big temperature gradients (difference in temperature between the vent and leather seat that's been baking in the sun for hours, for example) it's very hard to get an accurate reading with something that measures on such a small scale. Pointing the IR thermometer an inch or two away from a particular spot can mean a temperature difference of ten degrees or more.

HVAC guys use the IR thermometers as a way to measure if the air coming out of a vent in the ceiling is relatively cold rather than get a ladder, climb up, put a thermometer in there when they don't really care about the actual temperature, just whether it's cold or not.

ben_r_

Huh.... well this ended up being a useless thread... Doesnt anyone else have an IR thermometer that they can use to double check this? Man you can ge them for like 40 - 50 bucks on ebay!

ToothDoc

I don't mean to bring a dead issue back again. I have an IR thermometer and wanted to test it. To start off, my mouth read about 95 degrees F and my armpit read 81. The ambient temperature this morning was 79 on my way to work. As I drove, I put the AC on max, recirc, and only from the vents (no floor). I was surprised that within a minute, it was already down to 40 degrees... 30... 20... 17. Then it kept on going lower and lower down to NEGATIVE 2!!!!!! Then, it started to slowly rise and rise and rise until it seemed to settle around low 30's. It hit the peak low temp in only about 3-4 minutes after startup. Out of curiosity, I left it on full blast. It takes me 18 minutes to get to work. I could see my breath just like a cold fall day!!!

So, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw -2 degrees F - the condenser must've started to freeze or something so that it couldn't maintain that low a temp for long.

lobuxracer

iTrader: (2)

The readings are anomalous. I put a standard digital thermometer in the vent (normal tech's test procedure) this morning and set the controls for maximum a/c. The lowest temperature I saw was 39.0 degrees.

Ambient temperature

One minute

Settings

Two minutes

Three minutes

Four minutes

Settings (going for broke)

Five minutes

Driving around the block - lowest temp I could photograph and drive


I hate cold. I refused to move anywhere in the snow belt and thankfully my wife is Caribbean, so she was fine with heat and humidity over snow. Just for you guys, I froze my butt off to show the truth. IR is anomalous technology for accurate air temperatures under dynamic conditions.

Lets Drive

iTrader: (3)

Interesting. My IS starts blowing cold air within the first minute, and it gets cool very fast. Two minutes would be the absolute max, and we're getting consistent code orange high 90 degree weather here in the MD area.

I'm set on 74F at all times, left on auto, w/ 15k miles on the odo (just replaced filters).

IS350jet

I thought infrared thermometers could not measure air temperature, only surface temperature. Correct me if I'm wrong. That's why you must use a a/c thermometer like Lobux did.

Bichon

You are correct that IR thermometers measure surface temperature, but I see commercial HVAC techs using them all the time to shoot the temps on individual supply registers. What they are actually reading, I suppose, is the temperature of the metal diffusers, not the air flowing through them.

The method that Lobux used is the one I've seen MVAC techs and auto mechanics employ, and the results he obtained seem much more reasonable, given the amount of condensate I see pouring out of my car.

Buds

So very very true

LexusIS-TL

I used one of those IR thermometers today for the first time. I had a hell of a lot of them with them. Looks like a checkout scanner but smaller. You aim, press trigger and hold until the temp readout across the LCD display. Wow, I went nuts measuring asphalt temps, awning temps, body temp, floor temp, car temp, etc. It picks up everything with HIGH accuracy.

Oh with my AC, so-so. Not arctic cold like some of you mentioned. It does feel cool, but I have to blast the fan on super high to feel it. I always have it on LO, no need to get in between because it NEVER get that cold really.

Xanadu350

I remember reading through this thread before my car arrived and decided to test it out after I got my car, here is a pic I took while driving around town, you can see from my Nav screen the outside temp was 93 and inside it got down to about 30. I was impressed. Thought I'd share my pic in this thread.