cake transport modifications

[IamIan]

My wife makes wedding cakes...

Some times we find ourselves using the large flat hatch area in my insight to transport them... to care for the icing and cakes with filling the air conditioning is usually set to max and started 2 or 3 minutes before the cake is put in the car... I know this is painful to most insight owners when things like this need done ... they kill fuel economy ...

Sun light is also an issue which can fade colors...

Window tinting seems to be an idea to help but I have gotten very conflicting, information about what is legal and the best ways to do it....

just wondering if anyone has any tips for cake transport in the insight to protect the cake from sunlight / heat / easy transport ...ect.....

thanks for any insights
.
ian

[sputnik]

Hi Iam Ian,

Oh my...what a question! Certainly you are fortunate that your wife bakes (when I try a cake mix, my family "casually" mentions that we do have perfectly good Oreos in the pantry ) and of course you are both fortunate to have an Insight.

If you run the AC in econ it should autostop which would help FE once you are on the road. Rather than pre-chilling the car, maybe you could partially freeze the frosted cake beforehand. Does sunlight fade frosting?! This is way beyond my meager baking experience! Presumably putting the cake in a box would keep sunlight off . The storage well in the back has an insulated cover that might hold a medium cake.

There are many posts regarding window tinting. Try the forum Search. I'm currently looking at the Llumar Platinum Plus 35 and the FormulaOne Premier series window tints http://www.insightcentral.net/forum/vie ... php?t=2781

In general the car should be "batter off" as far as heat reduction, with a good quality tint. I believe the primary reason is to protect the battery pack, but no reason it could not also protect your cakes

[figgy]

Since the use of the IMA charge and discharge warms up the battery, you might also try to reduce IMA assist and regen when you are with cake.

Sun shade and/or some nice insulation that lets the AC cool air circulate inside underneath the shade in cake area, but keeps the hot sun off, would be nice if it could be supported to stay above the cake top.

Giant toothpicks are probably not wise, but maybe some legs on the side of a big piece of rigid foam would work to make a little insulated shade cavity which would still let AC cool air circulate.


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I bet the above looks bad! It should look like the little cake protector house.

[figgy]

One other idea, if cake is not too large, is to take out passenger seat and then make the cake house in that area and blow the passenger AC vent into it as well as the two center AC vents. That would keep it like ice, and there would be much less sun on the cake house insulation.

[james]

Build a special cake box (or several, for different sizes) out of 1" foam insulation, possibly layering it between thin plywood or plastic. Then ice or those reusable blue ice things should keep it much cooler than AC would.

As a bonus, you can paint it to look pretty, with a business logo or whatever.

[Kevin Dougherty]

I suppose strapping it to the roof to cool in the breeze is out of the question

[ghillie]

Regardless of the problems, I would definitely get window tinting done. I have found that it substantially reduces radiant heat coming into the car.

[IamIan]

Tinting is on my list

should help to reduce AC usage even when not transporting Cakes...

The Foam cake box might not be a bad idea.
Only problem i forsee is the larger wedding cakes... one inperticular that she is making will have a thin skin of rolled fondant and a stream / spring theme... biggest problem with this perticular cake is that she tells me she has to transport this one assembled.... I have a few months ... but she said she expects me to transmort it there intact no problems.... I am just trying to figure out some options ahead of time.

Since she and I both go to most of the weddings she makes cakes for... the passenger seat has to stay...

Does anyone know if there is any significant effect to having the AC on Air Recycle instead of in from the outside? I would imagine it would need less cooling but i havn't tested the theory yet.

Thanks for all the ideas and feedback.

[JustinGray]

have you ever seen the special camera mounts that the movie guys use to get rid of virbration? You should get one of those!

Gyroscopically stablalized cake transportation!

[IamIan]

I was never able to find any of the stablizers like that for any reasonable price... I had thought about even trying to make one once... but ended up not... as the more research i did the more complicated and expensive it got with no end in sight.

But yes such a Stabalizer would be Ideal for a Cake Transporter.