Help help help! truck stuck in ice!

Alcohol based products will work, but they will be slower than antifreeze. 5" of ice will take about a minute and about a quart of full strength lowtox antifreeze. And you can get it at almost any car parts store.

lol i wish i had one of those in my truck before my truck got stuck

Propane torch will work too, just be careful not to burn the tire or the rubber parts of the caliper.

How much time do you have? Are you bring a pregnant women to the hospital. Then an ice pick is not the answer.

ive got time i just want it out of the offroading area. just so nobody breaks into it or smashes my windows haha

Can you take the tire off? That would speed things up. Better access.

oh thought you said you were in UTAH? you meant Detroit.

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i wish but my offroad jack i have wont sit properrly because of the surface. and im pretty sure the lug nuts are also frozen. i had to chip ice away from them and i tried using a torque wrench to get the nut of but it wouldnt even budge

If you are at home right now, you could take a big blanket or sleeping bag and cover the whole front end, including the tires. The just run the engine. In about a half hour, the ice will be gone, unless it is 40 below or something. The engine generates a lot of heat and a good blanket or sleeping bag will hold it in. You might have to zip two sleeping bags together to cover everything. Iā€™ve seen that done in Upper Michigan to get cars out that were stuck in ice and snow.

I had a 77 Blazer. I would be dropping it into low-low and rocking it. I know something is going to break lose eventually. Itā€™s only frozen water for cripes sake.

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People in cold areas have portable propane heaters, do you know someone that you could borrow one from?

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Camping heaters are inexpensive;

The whole time Iā€™m thinking you got loads of space and you can lay under the truck.

Iā€™d just transport as much hot water as you can and pour it over the ice.

Gallon jugs, for example. Simple cheap solution.

A lot of the suggestions in here would melt his tire and brake lines.

Go down to the hardware store and get a spray can of lock de-icer. Itā€™s meant to melt ice out of frozen key holes, but you can just spray it directly between the pads and rotors and it should take care of that ice too.

Salt water might work - the freezing point of salt water depends entirely on the salt-to-water ratio, but if itā€™s too cold where you are, you canā€™t achieve a freeze-proof mixture without supersaturation. Donā€™t heat it - hot water freezes faster than cold water due to greater surface area. And your first stop should be a car wash with a very good underbody spray.

But I think the lock deicer would work best if you can wiggle under the truck enough to get behind the wheel.

For the purpose of defrosting. . .
Would the exhaust pipe temperature be enough ?
Get a length of tubing to fit an exhaust pipe . . either that truck or the one you drive out there to work on it . . and aim it in there to defrost.
Not so hot as to melt plastic shields, hoses, and harnesses like a torch.

Thats not true. The surface area isnā€™t that significant. What is true that hot water, cooling down to the temp of cold water will refreeze quicker. If you take a liter of 140 degree water and a liter of 40 degree water and put them into a freezer, or out in sub freezing weather, the 40 degree water will freeze first.

If you take the same containers of water and put the 140 degree container in the freezer and the 40 degree in the refrigerator to maintain the 40 degrees. Then move the 40 degree water to the freezer at the point that the 140 degree container has cooled to 40 degrees, then from that point, the hot water will freeze sooner as it is already used to giving up heat. It has momentum.

Most lock deicers use either alcohol or antifreeze in them. I still think that a propylene glycol antifreeze is the best overall solution where animals are involved, or just a large blanket laid over the front of the vehicle. The antifreeze will be a lot quicker though.

First, it has nothing to do with ā€œmomentum.ā€ The reason a water-filled vessel already in the freezer will cool faster than a new vessel put into the freezer with water thatā€™s at the same temperature as the already-in-the-freezer water is because the vessel itself is already colder than the water due to being in a colder environment.

What youā€™re trying to describe in static vessels of water is called the Mpemba effect, and the latest idea is that itā€™s actually a function of the intermolecular hydrogen bonds. If one molecule of water gets close enough to another molecule of water, weak hydrogen-oxygen bonds form between the two molecules. Those bonds store energy which must be dissipated in the cooling process before the water can freeze.

The hotter you make something, the more pressure it builds, which means warmer waterā€™s molecules are farther apart from each other, which means the intramolecular bonds will be stretched, the molecules involved will shrink and give up energy, which in practical terms yields a greater cooling effect.

At any rate, you and I are now discussing (relatively) large volumes of water stored in containers, not sprays of water shot at a brake pad. Hot water will cool faster when itā€™s moved through the air outside of a container, which is why on really cold days you can throw a pitcher of boiling water straight up in the air and get snow, whereas if you throw a pitcher of cold water in the air you just get drenched.

I agree with you on this. But you did not set conditions on your statement. Also, even though I did not set conditions on recommending hot antifreeze (which is not water), I did not specify how hot. I did not mean boiling, just hot. I would use something between 120 and 140 degrees, but that would be a guess as I wouldnā€™t actually have a thermometer. Iā€™d just heat it on a camp stove until I see a little steam coming off the top.

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Rent a portable, propane fueled space heater at someplace like Cresco, or any place that rents equipment for contractors.