So, to bring this full circle, the guy across the street with the 1998 Dodge Caravan doesn’t need the Lucky Charms packing crate slapped on his grill with a handful of garbage bag twist ties. I thought so. It’s a bit of throwback to the roasting pan UL, he tells me his father used to do it every winter.
Thanks for all the input!
With God as my witness, I thought turkey’s could fly.
Crimony, that’s just plain tacky! Bad enough he doesn’t need it in the first place, but doesn’t he know how to open the hood???
Geez, you have to live in a real cold place, one the temperature reaches oh, say -30C (-10F), you don’t always get a lot of heat coming into the passenger compartment. Most people who put cardboard on the rads are just to cheap to get a real grill cover.
And another thing those plugs on our (Canadian ) cars aren’t there because we have electric cars, they are called block heaters and they keep the oil in the block somehat liquid.
god, I wish I didn’t have to live in a place where I knew about all this.
Keith
Yes, I think we’ve established if you drive in temperatures below the vehicle’s design limits, cardboard might be an acceptable patch. But as pmh pointed out, that’s probably below -20 F for most vehicles manufactured in the 1990’s, with the possible exception of diesels. My 5.3 L 1999 full-size pickup warms up in less than 5 minutes at -5 F with no idle time.*
But my last point was that twist ties (presumably with the cardboard on the front of the grille) would be pretty ugly looking (and would be prone to flying off). All you’d have to do is open the hood and put the cardboard between the radiator and the grille. A big enough piece probably isn’t going to go anywhere if you place it correctly.
You’re darn right it’s ugly looking!
With God as my witness, I thought turkey’s could fly.