Welcome • User Guide
ToS • Privacy • Canary
Donate • Bugs • License

©2025 Poal.co

194

Old cars often have deteriorating interiors(not my Honda) and I got to thinking why. Obviously the sun is a big culprit, the sun will fade dashes, make leather crack, plastic bubble, etc.

Why does this happen? Because all the moisture has been evaporated off the surface, it has essentially been dehydrated.

So, how do we keep things hydrated? With hydration of course, which then begs the question, how much hydration? Too much and your glass gets foggy on the inside and you start getting nasty musky/moldy smells, too little and the interior starts to degrade.

I mean if you put a small dixie cup in a car, and fill it 1/4 way, and leave the car parked in the sun, some of that water will evaporate to steam increasing the humidity in the cabin. Now humidity in the air does have the benefit of limiting radiative heating from the sun, and it also has the benefit of saturating interior parts limiting sun based dehydration. But there's the problem of smell and mustiness that comes from swamp weather.

Old cars often have deteriorating interiors(not my Honda) and I got to thinking why. Obviously the sun is a big culprit, the sun will fade dashes, make leather crack, plastic bubble, etc. Why does this happen? Because all the moisture has been evaporated off the surface, it has essentially been dehydrated. So, how do we keep things hydrated? With hydration of course, which then begs the question, how much hydration? Too much and your glass gets foggy on the inside and you start getting nasty musky/moldy smells, too little and the interior starts to degrade. I mean if you put a small dixie cup in a car, and fill it 1/4 way, and leave the car parked in the sun, some of that water will evaporate to steam increasing the humidity in the cabin. Now humidity in the air does have the benefit of limiting radiative heating from the sun, and it also has the benefit of saturating interior parts limiting sun based dehydration. But there's the problem of smell and mustiness that comes from swamp weather.

(post is archived)

You are currently inside a comment thread.
Click here to see all the comments (57).
[–] • 1 pt

240f on your dash will make steam.

[–] • 3 pts

The water is going to evaporate before it gets to that point.

Steam generally requires a pressurized vessel to develop and/or a large heat input such as that from a flame or other direct heat source. In a car that's slowly heating up, you're going to lose all your water to evaporation long before it reaches the boiling point, and even then you won't get steam except in nucleated bubbles - if they can even form.

[–] • 0 pt

Steam is the vaporized form of water dude.

[–] • 0 pt

Water vapor is actual water in the air. Steam is a gas, and is not water vapor.

Steam is only possible when you raise water above the critical temperature for a given pressure. In our case, at sea level, water will turn to steam at 212F if enough heat it put into the water mass so as not to evaporate before it reaches that critical temperature. When you boil water in a pot, you get steam in bubbles rising from the bottom, or nucleation sites. Once they reach the surface and burst, you just have 211F water vapor.

You can't see steam, as it's a gas. Look at an an old whistling kettle. You'll see vapor blowing off, but that little bit on the whistle where you see nothing is the steam.

[–] • 0 pt

Vapor steam steam vapor, what's the difference besides pressure. Evaporated water is evaporated water.

[–] • 1 pt

Steam is water raised to the critical temperature for a given pressure, and is a gas. At atmospheric pressure of 29.97 inHg with an open container, it immediately will fall back below the critical temperature and return to hot water vapor, which is not a gas.

Evaporated water (water vapor) is water in the air represented by a value we call humidity, and is not a gas, but an actual water mass whose amount or capacity is allowed primarily by temperature of the air mass.