Be kind to your car

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

x-posted to b0st0n

Ok, folks, we have the first really severe cold weather of the year, and it's time to remind everyone of some basic car-care tips to help your ride survive the weather.



First of all, it is uber-important to take the time to warm your car up in the morning. Let the engine run for 5 to 10 minutes before you take off. Remember, your motor oil is about the consistency of molasses in a freezer and until it warms up, won't be doing squat to protect your engine. Same goes for your transmission fluid as well. If you don't allow them to warm up, your engine and tranny have next to no protection. Which leads to this.....

Metal doesn't like cold. Metal gets brittle. Metal can easily fatigue and snap. This goes for your engine parts, the transmission, and your suspension. If you roar off doing your usual Thunder Road trip and hit a pot hole, you will snap your suspension. Which in some instances would be fitting karmic revenge, but generally, most of you are pretty decent folks who don't deserve such a fate. For those who do deserve it, most likely this will happen in a place that will inconvenience the most amount of people, like the Expressway at 4pm. Take it slow and easy, especially when you first get going.

When you start your car and put on your heater, do not run the defrost at full blast. Why? Because you will cause the windshield to expand and it may well crack or shatter. Even just the sun, as weak as it is, can cause this to happen. Run your heater first or if you run the defroster, don't run it at high temperature. And when you drive, be aware of any strange noises, especially cracking ones that indicate your windshield is letting go. Under the worst-case scenario, the whole thing may shatter as you're driving. Be aware and keep your stereo turned down when you're driving at a decent clip, just so you can be a little better prepared.

A few maintenance tips. Keep your gas tank at least half full. Before they started adding ethanol to gas, it was a good idea to add drygas, which is just alcohol, to your gas. I'm not sure if ethanol has the similar qualities and if anyone is a mechanic or just knows the answer to this, let us know.

Check your antifreeze. As the name implies, it will keep your engine from freezing and if you are low or the antifreeze in your engine is weak, your engine block can freeze and crack and then you have major major problems and may as well just set your car on fire and blame it on the neighborhood thugs. If you're not mechanically inclined, you can buy pre-mixed antifreeze and add it yourself to your reservior, usually located on the front passenger side of the engine and has a hot/cold level mark on it.

Check your windshield washer fluid too. I recommend the low-temperature yellow/orange fluid, rather than the blue. Lower freezing temperature. Quick fix too is a bottle of common rubbing (isopropyl) alchohol dumped into the washer fluid tank if your lines happen to freeze. Also, a tip I learned from a mechanic- let your windshield wipers warm up a bit before using them. They get cold and brittle and won't do squat until they regain their flexibility.

Get yourself a little thing of de-icer for your locks in case they freeze. Another quick fix is to hit your lock and/or your key with a lighter.

When you park at night, turn off all your electrical things- headlights, radio, heater fan, etc- and let your engine run for a couple of minutes. This will help charge your battery to full and that little extra bit might make the difference between your car turning over in the morning or just sitting there coughing and mocking you.

Good luck and stay warm everyone!

Comments

[komos.livejournal.com]

I'm anxiously awaiting your treatise on window-box gardening and on the care and feeding of guinea hens.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

What I like is that I saw this twice on my f-list, which in no way affects its relevance on my life.

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

I'll keep those in mind come springtime.

[wildflowersoul.livejournal.com]

I'm a-gonna start posting my daily television watching schedule. It will be fascinating to all because I live in Davis and some other people might watch tv here, too!

o_0

I can haz intarwebs?

[rethcir.livejournal.com]

My poor car has a leaky window seal or something. It was frosted on the INSIDE today. Not fun to deal with.

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

ouch! So you have to scrape the inside of your window. Definitely NOT FUN.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

I've had frost on the inside of my windshield a few times recently. I cannot figure out why this is happening, but it is a serious pain in the ass.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

That moisture is coming from *somewhere*. That could be an early warning sign of a heater core about to fail. Sometimes, when those fail, they dump hot coolant all over your feet. Best to get that checked out. One thing to look for is unexplained moisture in the front floorboards near the firewall. Unfortunately on many cars this is not a cheap fix--I've seen cars where you had to take most of the dash apart for the fix.

Happens all the time - surprised you haven't seen it

[avjudge]

I've seen this a lot over the years - is this really the first you've seen? If it's relatively warm and moist one day, and then the outside air gets colder (as it did last night), the air trapped in the car doesn't exchange fast enough to vent the moisture, so as it cools (=>relative humidity goes up) it condenses on the even colder windows. It can be non-frozen condensation in the summer, esp. if a warm damp rainy day is followed by a cool night. Or it can just be that you drove a long way with a bunch of friends and got the inside nice and warm, and the group of you breathing raised the humidity in the car. A failing heating core or failed seal is not necessary - in fact, I'd imagine a failed seal may help the problem, as it will let more air circulate! Cracking a window so the inside & outside air can exchange will definitely solve the problem, at the risk of some security.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

Thanks man. I have a hard time letting the engine idle since I'm usually so conscious about wasting gas, but in this weather I need to remember to be kind to my engine. Getting another 50,000 miles off my car will far outweigh the price of idling for a few minutes to warm up the tank.

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, given the choice between killing penguins or not having to shell out 3 grand for a new engine, Al Gore can just bite me. The penguins lose.

[derekp.livejournal.com]

I had a motorhead Physics teacher in high school who told us that the whole "letting your car warm up" thing was bull. He claimed the best thing to do was to turn it on and drive it slowly and easily until warm. Letting idle was worse than driving it slowly.

Of course, we lived in the burbs where you could creep along on back roads in the morning without being threatened or honked at...

de-icer...

[an-art-worker.livejournal.com]

oh - about de-icer. maybe not keep it in the car (since you will not be able to get to it if you actually need to use it...)

I have a VW Golf, which I mostly have enjoyed having but it has a tendency for the doors + windows to freeze up. Sucks to have to crawl into the car through the hatchback...

Re: de-icer...

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

Funny you mentioned that- I considered including that but thought "naw, that's being a bit too obvious..." Of course, I have to remember to bring my ice scraper and snow brush into the house BEFORE storms....

[daft.livejournal.com]

And here I thought the best thing to do for my car in the winter was park it in the back and leave it alone until the Spring thaw.


(Okay, that's probably only the best thing to do for *my* car, considering it doesn't have heat...)

[tisana.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It's useful, I didn't know a lot of that.

What about checking tire pressure--doesn't it change and contract a bit in the cold?

[somer-villains.livejournal.com]

tire pressure decreases about 1 psi for every 10 degrees F drop. so yes, you should check tire pressure frequently, not only for your own safety but to maximize fuel efficiency.

warm up the car?

[ms-info.livejournal.com]

i heard that one debunked on Car Talk (http://www.cartalk.com/content/columns/Archive/2007/April/06.html) a while back.

"The only exception is when the temperature is inhumanely, butt-freezingly frigid (like below 10 degrees Fahrenheit). Then it's not a bad idea to let the car idle for 30 seconds or a minute before heading out"

have we hit 10F yet?

Re: warm up the car?

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

It was 7 this morning, so, yes.

Re: warm up the car?

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

We sure did, it was 6 this morning when I drove in.

[ifotismeni]

5-10 minutes idle warmup? wtf? maybe about twenty years ago if you're driving some old jalopy. that's totally unnecessary nowadays. a minute or two and you should be good, honestly.

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

Technically, you're correct. But you're supposed drive "gently" to warm your car up, according to the Car Talk guys. But practically speaking, you can't do that in Boston. Not without taking your life in your hands. You become a traffic hazard at that point.

[cityofbeige.livejournal.com]

When you start your car and put on your heater, do not run the defrost at full blast. Why? Because you will cause the windshield to expand and it may well crack or shatter.

Yeah, my mother did this often when I grew up. I don't know how many windshields had to be replaced because the bottom had squiggly cracks going through it. She lives in Atlanta now, so while it occasionally does get down to freezing there, it almost never goes into the teens or single digits.

[nomacmac.livejournal.com]

I grew up in Minnesota, and never heard of anyone getting a cracked windshield because the defrost was on.

Thank you!

[c-m-i.livejournal.com]

For leading the way for 2008's Decline of Relevance of Davis Square.

But for a true D_S feel, we need the usual horde talking about how cars are an addiction and driving anywhere kills Bambi's mom.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to tomorrow's "Don't Eat Yellow Snow" feature.

When does the celeb gossip column start?

Re: Thank you!

[teko.livejournal.com]

No, thank you for being the requisite snarky troll on a well-thought-out and meaningful post with relevance to anyone driving a car in the coldest weather of the year. Yes, including Davis Square and Boston.

[veda815.livejournal.com]

When you park at night, turn off all your electrical things- headlights, radio, heater fan, etc- and let your engine run for a couple of minutes. This will help charge your battery to full and that little extra bit might make the difference between your car turning over in the morning or just sitting there coughing and mocking you.

Really? I didn't think that the RPMs would be high enough at idle to charge the battery.

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they are. Generally at idle the alternator puts out about 14 volts, more than enough to charge the battery. Even with items on, you're still at >12 volts, which is what you need to prevent the battery from discharging. But by shutting things down, you help charge the battery that much faster.

[apricot3.livejournal.com]

i've been here about a year now and still feel naive about this cold business after last night!

i need to follow some of your advice on this carcare crap. what's the best way to open your door when the entire thing is encased in ice? i guess one step is keeping the de-icer in the trunk instead...