Snow frozen on the under carriage

I drove in deep snow in my little Hyundai, parked it overnight after driving from Montana to North Dakota(home)and now it has frozen up…it’s going no where but starts

You know anybody with a torpedo heater? If so, point this under the front of the car until it unfreezes the suspension. But keep an eye on it so that you don’t melt the front of the vehicle. Other than that, it needs to dragged into a heated area.

Tester

I seriously doubt the frozen snow can prevent the car from moving. This has been happening to cars for years…and I’ve NEVER heard of it preventing a car from moving.

Maybe the OP decided to set his handbrake/e-brake/parking brake, despite the fact that this is not a good thing to do in freezing conditions. If he/she did set the handbrake, only a thorough thawing of the undercarriage is likely to free-up the cable.

My only suggestion is for the next time you drive in snow for a long distance, is as soon as you get to your destination knock all the snow out of the wheel wells and from under under carriage with poker while its still soft. Sorry for stating the obvious, but it could help the next person.

You don’t think so? Then let me tell you what happened to me a couple of weeks ago.

It was a 40 degree day with some fog in the air from the melting snow. I took a short trip to the store to pick up some stuff for supper. When I came out of the store, the temperature had dropped to 15 degrees with a 20-25 MPH wind. Got back home and parked in the driveway. That night the temperature dropped to -15 degrees. The next morning when I went to start the vehicle, the battery was dead. Went to open the hood and the hood latch was frozen. So I had the son come over to see if we could get it out of the driveway, and then he could push me with his vehicle so I could pop the clutch to get it started. When he tried to pull me out of the driveway with a tow rope, the wheels on my vehicle wouldn’t rotate because the brakes were frozen to the rotors and drums. And it didn’t help that the tires couldn’t get any grip because of the snow on the ground. So I ended up placing a torpedo heater under the front of the vehicle to get the hood latch to thaw out. This took over two hours. Once I was able to open the hood, I was able to jumpstart the engine. When I went to move the vehicle, one of the rear wheel brakes broke loose but the other three were still frozen. I then poured some Oil Dri under the one free rear tire so it would get more grip thereby allowing the open differental send power to the other rear tire. It worked and broke the other rear tire loose. I could now move the vehicle but it wouldn’t steer because both front brakes were still frozen. I then pointed the torpedo heater at each front wheel to thaw the front brakes so I could get it into the garage to thaw the thing out.

So, you’ld be surprised what can happen to a vehicle when moisture/snow is involved and the temperature takes a drastic drop.

Tester

I agree with Tester since I’ve actually seen a couple of cars frozen solid to the ground; with one of them being one of my own one time.

Quick story. I live in an outlying town and went into town one weekend on my Harley dresser motorcycle. There was about a foot of snow on the ground and it had been melting off for a day or so. The roads were patchy ice/snow/mostly slush and temps were in the upper 20s.

About 45 MPH all the way in and as I approached the first traffic light on the 4 lane I discovered when I pushed the brake pedal that the pedal moved but the brakes were not working. Quickly grabbing the front brake handle I discovered the same thing; handle moved but no brakes.

So I sailed on through the red light (thankfully no cars out there) and coasted to a stop. When I got off I noticed that both front and rear brake calipers were nothing but large balls of ice.
The slush being thrown up was freezing on the calipers. and everywhere else, due to air movement and preventing the pistons from coming out. It was almost at the point where the tires would not even turn inside the fenders.
Even with a screwdriver out of the saddlebags I could not get them freed up so the trip to my parents house was made at slow speed and involved a lot of foot dragging.

When I lived in North Dakota I occasionally had the tires frozen to the ground and they can be a bear to break free.