The Right Windshield Sunshade for Your Infiniti or Nissan
When you’re looking for an aftermarket windshield sunshade
In fact, they offer some flexibility with sizes in small, medium, large and extra-large for trucks and SUVs. However, if you own an Infiniti or a Nissan none of these sizes will seem to be quite right for your windshield.
Maybe it’s not the end of the world if the shade is a little too small, but if it’s too big it will not do a good job of blocking the sun or staying in place. Recently I replaced my troublesome first generation Cadillac SRX with a new used car from Infiniti.
The old car had a light gray interior. The Infiniti has a black interior, dashboard and carpeting. I knew this would be a problem, but I underestimated just how much of one it would become.
It’s not like I had much of a choice. I got a good deal on the used car, it just had the wrong color interior and I figured I could live with it. Unfortunately, I would live with this dark interior in the sunshine state of Florida.
When July rolled around I quickly realized that I would need a windshield sunshade. Not only to protect the interior, but the make the car immediately drivable on a sunny day. Since the Infiniti doesn’t have a remote start feature (one of the 7 things I hate) we would have to get in the vehicle and run the AC to start the cool down process.
If you’re wearing shorts you couldn’t even get in the car as the seats had a surface temperature approaching the 150 degree range. To make matters worse, even though there’s nothing wrong with the air conditioning it would take a good 10 minutes before you could drive the car.
Picking the Right Windshield Sunshade
With the standard choices of small, medium, large or extra-large I decided to go for the medium-size. I purchased a standard fold up accordion style sunshade. The medium was too big for the windshield and it didn’t fit well.
I returned it for the smallest size and although this did fit into place it left major gaps around the perimeter. It also didn’t fit well and sometimes would fall down as the sun roasted the reflective material and made it soft.
After doing some research it seemed that the odd size windshield of Infiniti and Nissan products might require a custom solution. There are only a handful of companies that will custom make a reflective windshield sunshade for your particular automobile.
One of those companies is heatshield. I ordered the product through Amazon
The Good Things about the Heatshield Sunshade
The quality of the materials is unmistakably superior to the one I purchased at the big box store. The price is also very reasonable as it only cost about $15 more than one that’s not custom-made for your automobile.
The products strongest feature is that it’s the same exact size as the interior surface of the automobile’s windshield.
On the Infiniti M 37 and the Nissan Maxima the molding surrounding the inside of the windshield will actually hold this device in place without using the fold-down sun visors.
I have a picture on the right that shows you exactly how it fits. This will save ware and tear on your factory installed sun visors as they are not designed to hold up an aftermarket reflector.
On the product description it states it will lower the interior temperatures about 40° over not using a windshield sun reflector at all. I found this to be not only true, but a little bit of an understatement for somebody who parks their car in the Florida sun.
The heatshield dropped my interior surface temperatures down to just under 100 degrees. When you compare this to the 150 I was dealing with before purchasing this, it’s an amazing achievement. A hundred degrees is not exactly comfortable, but it is bearable until the air conditioning gets going.
Problems with the Windshield Sunshade
As you can see from the pictures the heatshield is much larger than the small fold up one that I had previously.
The other difference is that when storing it the device rolls up instead of folding up. The heatshield is secured with an attached Velcro band.
In order for this set up to work you have to roll it up very tight. In fact it may take you a few times before you get it small enough to use the included Velcro fastener.
The other problem is installing it and removing it from the windshield. Because it fits so tightly it requires much more effort than just throwing it up onto the dash as with the accordion style sunshades.
When someone is sitting in the passenger seat this is no big deal as they can help you push it against the glass and it actually pops right into place.
However, when you’re by yourself this will take some effort and require more time than you might have expected. With that said, I do believe that after removing it and replacing it several times a day, every day that I will come up with a streamlined method making the task much easier.
If you own a Nissan or an Infiniti car and you’re looking for the most efficient sunshade for reducing interior temperatures, you’ll most likely have to go the route of a custom-made product.
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