I have a Fabia 1.4 16V Comfort 2001, I have just noticed that only the top half of my rear windscren is demisting, the bottom half does not demist at all. I pulled the trim on the sides of the rear windscreen to see if the contact tags have detached and they're fine.

Are there separate tags for the bottom half, or has my windscreen 'burnt out at the bottom?

Thanks

Are all the element strands intact mate? Check them carefully - if there's a gap between any of them you can fill it with a touch of metallic paint and it should work fine.

I will check the elements. Cheers for that suggestion

There is also a specific product to repair these, Again just a paint on, Which you can get from a good Motor Factors.

One here.

Granville Electro Connector From Choiceful.com >Automotive > Car Maintenance

Dean

If the upper half is working and the lower not, there pretty much has to be a break in one of the side elements just below the lowest cross wire that is working.

If you have a multimeter, you can check the voltage on each individual element by having the black lead to earth, and touching the elents with the red lead. You will see volts go from 12 to zero as you work across the good elements, the bad elements will read zero all the way across, hopefully you will be able to pinpoint the break(s).

Previous poster not quite correct- It is correct that you will get a voltage from 0 to 12 volts on the good elements,but using an example if the broken element is open circuit half way across the screen ,the meter will read 0 volts up to the break (halfway across the screen),and 12 volts onwards from the break , to the end of that element. Only a good single element row will have increasing or decreasing voltage across its length. Normally there will only be one tag on either end of the complete element.

Edited 5 November, 200916 yr by AndyPandy

Agree above, but was trying to keep it simple. If the break is at the side strip or at one end, then you will see either zero or 12v across the length of the element, depending which side the break is.

Hi Kwacka,

I fully understand why you wanted to make it simple. I just made sure this post didn't get swamped with 'I cant get a varying voltage across the faulty single (or more than one element) , what am I doing wrong?' . I have previously done Industrial Electronic fault finding in my career , and find it hard not to nit pick any Electrical post!. I still get annoyed with 'My power steering is not working all the time?' ,when there is loads of info on this subject on Briskoda!.

regards

Andy

I just did it by eye when a full boot-load scraped a couple of the bars on the rear screen of my old Xantia. Dead easy to see where the break/s is/are if you open the boot and look up at the sky through the glass. I used silver-doped paint from Maplin or RS or something - worked a treat!