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.

[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.

[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.

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...

[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...)

[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.

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....

[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?

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

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

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?

[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.

Re: warm up the car?

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

It was 7 this morning, so, yes.

[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.

Re: warm up the car?

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

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

Re: warm up the car?

[ms-info.livejournal.com]

cripes. i like winter and all, but 7F! sighs.

[ifotismeni]

i've been having it too! never happened before :( grrrrr.

[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.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I think it happened to me because snow got inside the car (on my coat and shoes) and then melted, and the moisture couldn't escape. Maybe that's how it happens, at least sometimes.

[rethcir.livejournal.com]

My preliminary googling indicates that basically too much moisture is getting trapped in my car. This could be because of a venting issue (clogged air vent or release port) or possibly because my doors/windows are freezing so tight that nothing's getting out that way either. So, my plan is to crack my window a bit at work (garage) and see if things improve at all, and also to see what sort of venting problems I could be having.

Unfortunately I do need to eventually bite the bullet and get another car though..

[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.

[medyani.livejournal.com]

Actually it's a "win-win" because the penghuins lose "more" due the environmental costs of creating the new engine, and disposing of the old. No need to get Al all growly.

[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...

Re: warm up the car?

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

http://community.livejournal.com/b0st0n/5649923.html?thread=68276995#t68276995


And for me, a rule of thumb is to look at the container of oil in my trunk and figure that this is what the oil in my engine is like. If it is not thin enough, I let my car warm a bit.

[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.

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

I'll keep those in mind come springtime.