Yes katidid; all of us believe that you don’t drive off till it’s safe to do so. When I was young and foolish, I would just clear a small peephpole in the winshield and just drive off with snow blowing off in all directions, especially on drivers behind me. Graduallly the windshield would clear of frost as the car heated up. In the meantime I could see very little of what was going on around me.
Thank you everyone. I agree with you also but I wanted to be certain that I wasn’t spreading mis-information.
To all the excellent advice, my only thought is time left UN used is important. I can see that as far as the battery is concerned, on vehicles you really need to start in cold weather, to make everything available when needed, you run it and drive it regularly. Otherwise, except for freezing batteries and coolant, cold storage is fine.
Weatherman on tv last couple days has been telling people during this cold spell to “Get out there & start your cars! Let em run 15 or 20 minutes before you drive in this cold”. Thanks for the terrible advice. Hope I’m not the only one to email him about it.
The only problem with cold weather and cars that I’ve ever had are the doors sticking. Oh yeah and starting up the F-250…Those Diesels take a while to warm up. Dad put a block heater in the truck a few years ago and he says that’s the best thing he’s even done to that truck aside from having it lifted.
When I go to work I just start and go. I have about 2 miles of back roads before I reach the highway. I usually just take it slow and by the time I reach the highway my truck is warmed up.
When I go home I’ll let it idle a little on real cold days. I park about 300’ from the highway entrance…and where I get on the highway I have to gun in most times to merge in traffic (very very busy area).
katidid79 wrote:
The only problem with cold weather and cars that I’ve ever had are the doors sticking.
Some people lubricate the door seals to help prevent this, although at least one of our previous cars had a warning specifically saying not to apply any silicone products to the door seals.
When I lived in Vermont, worked 12 hours night shifts at IBM (7pm to 7am), 3 days one week and 4 days the next, the last thing I wanted to do was come out of work and have to wait in mid-January for the car to warm up. I purchased a remote starter with a timer that could be programmed with four different combinations which worked nicely for my staggered schedule. A remote starter by itself didn’t work in this application due to all the electronics on site and the distance from the car to where I was working. It worked terrific! While everyone else was having to let their cars warm up to de-ice the windshield, my was ready to roll. When there was snow, it was melted. I’d set the timer to go off 20 minutes before I’d be leaving and it performed flawlessly. This may be a solution for reunicate so that she can still leave at her regular time and not have to leave the apartment before leaving.
Interseted to know something. I agree about the block heater but I noticed mine will crank at sub zero when the heater isnt on (or when I forget). I guess ive always wanted to know the real max sub zero. I think it will do -15 and most times thats as bead as it gets but I do worry about a situation where there’s no plug. I know synthetic flows up to -50…doesnt freeze, that is…but I often wonder if I shoild go after a battery that has 900 cca
With a synthetic like 0W20, your car will crank at -40F, but there will be much more engine wear than if you prewarm the engine with a block heater.
Every oil has a "Pour Point’ which is the lowest temperature that the oil will pour and the oil pump can pump it. There is also a “Borderline Cranking Temperature”, used in Canada , which is the temperature at which the car will still crank the engine. Any reputable oil depot will have the tech sheets with these numbers.
Putting in a monster battery will destroy the starter and still not get the valve gear properly lubricated.
Keep in mind that a cold start is equivalent to 500 miles of engine wear.
Well since this is a seven year old thread…
The question was about DRIVING a car.
First off, -10 is nothing, plenty of days when it was much colder when I drove. But then I never had a job that accepted “baby it’s cold outside” as a reason not to come to work.
Tom McCall recommended initially driving slowly to allow suspension parts to free up. But that advice was written in the 50s, I suspect modern alloys are somewhat less brittle.
That’s not true. The starter DRAWS from the battery…The battery doesn’t PUSH electricity. The starter will only draw what it needs.
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Yeah now that we are bringing back a discussion from 2012, I’ll add a little warning. You need to drive your car, not just let it warm up. The only time my diesel Olds didn’t start was when I failed to drive it. We were at scout camp and it got down to 20 below. I went up the hill and warmed it up good about 11:00 at night. The next morning it wouldn’t start (well finally after jump after jump on my two batteries). Had I taken it out and driven it like I used to do with my 59 Pontiac, I do believe that it would have reluctantly started on its own. Two batteries so agree with Mike, a large capacity doesn’t hurt a starter, just makes it grind longer.
59 Pontiac, yes, you could get more bodies in a Body by Fisher.
Block heaters are nice, but I never bothered with them in MN on either my Pontiacs or big block Plymouths. They always started with dinosaur 10W-30.
Still good advice. The lubrication in the transmission, CV joints, etc, is still gonna be pretty stiff until it warms up, and even if you let the car warm up while parked so that you have a nice warm interior when you start driving, those things aren’t warm yet and will protect the components better if you take it easy on them until they are.
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