# Gas line freeze **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 21, 2025, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gas-line-freeze/1013222 "2025-01-21T18:59:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2025, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gas-line-freeze/1013222/21 "2025-01-23T13:29:34Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > What could possibly go wrong? One would think, but I don’t recall any disasters. They would take the car batteries into the dorms until needed. Also, back then when tires were made of rubber, they would freeze flat on the bottoms, so a drive down a smooth road was like riding on square wheels. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2025, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gas-line-freeze/1013222/22 "2025-01-23T13:29:47Z")
I heard of one fellow who sued a gas station years ago because they filled up with diesel, and it turned out to have a serous water content (presumably a problem with their tanks, and not being a major truck stop, the tank did not get refilled often.) Apparently water in diesel injectors is very bad. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2025, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gas-line-freeze/1013222/23 "2025-01-23T14:03:43Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Alaskan who lived in Fairbanks for two years, where it’s common for winter temps to dip to -40F or lower. Gas will gel, oil will freeze at those temps. People on campus who for some reason didn’t have a crankcase heater, would light a small bonfire under their oil pans when it was that cold to try and get some circulation going. > [@Chefguy](#): > > They would take the car batteries into the dorms until needed. I went to college in North Dakota, and we faced similar issues. Once when daytime highs were in the negative teens, I planned to travel home for a weekend (a couple hundred miles). I took my car battery into my dorm room overnight to ensure it would be warm and potent and could reliably start my car when I put it back in. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2025, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gas-line-freeze/1013222/24 "2025-01-23T16:43:17Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > People on campus who for some reason didn’t have a crankcase heater, would light a small bonfire under their oil pans when it was that cold to try and get some circulation going. If you’re going to use the car within (say) four hours, it’s best to simply keep the car idling. Unfortunately this is often impractical, or not allowed. There is the concern of car theft, CO, etc. ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2025, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gas-line-freeze/1013222/25 "2025-01-23T16:59:30Z")
Here’s a commercial from the 1950’s about gas line freeze. > **[1961 Standard Oil Company Commercial - Features 60 Chevy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB9KzoLsLB4t=0.01)** > > The Standard Oil Company offered this commercial from about 1961. The ad features a few cool cars from the time. You can see a 60 Chevy, 57 Ford, 60 Studeb... I remember when I started driving in the 1970’s there were lots of commercials advertising Heet and other additives to pour into your car when you filled the gas tank, to absorb water vapor and prevent freezing gas lines. I personally only experienced one event when my line froze, at night. I had to call a tow truck to leave it in the heated garage at a service station\* and pick it up the next morning… \*(remember when gas stations were called service stations? 🙂 ) ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2025, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gas-line-freeze/1013222/26 "2025-01-23T17:19:45Z")
Well, to have gas line freeze, you must have H2O in your gas tank, otherwise it doesn’t matter what the temperature is as long as its above the freezing temperature of gasoline. Since most forms of gasoline freeze at something like -100 degrees, we need not worry. If, for some reason, you believe moisture may have compromised your fuel system, they do sell additives like K-100 that absorb moisture. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2025, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gas-line-freeze/1013222/27 "2025-01-23T18:07:26Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > Am I right in guessing that over-wing GA planes don’t use a fuel pump? If so, it’s not hard to imagine ice crystals accumulating in (and eventually blocking) the line from the wing to the carb, since you wouldn’t have a fuel pump chewing up ice and cramming fuel past minor obstructions. Didn’t mean to ignore this; been a couple busy days at home 😁 Yes, generally high winged planes use gravity feed. Low wing planes typically have a boost pump someplace near the tank(s) outlet(s) for start & takeoff / close to the ground ops, while relying mostly on simple siphon feed the rest of the time. Two other issues with GA airplanes: - They tend to sit outdoors for days, weeks, or months between uses. Giving plenty of time for however water does get in to accumulate into a material quantity. Likewise the airport’s fuel trucks and systems see a lot less turnover than a suburban car gas station. - The fuel filler ports and caps are on the top surface of the wings directly exposed to the elements. If (unusually) they are behind a fairing door, that whole assembly is set into a well that can act as a sump for falling rainwater. All of which places a great strain on ensuring the filler neck and cap and cap vent (if any) don’t admit water at all. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2025, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gas-line-freeze/1013222/28 "2025-01-23T20:51:24Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > 44 years ago, many cars still had carburetors instead of fuel injection. Did that have any effect on the likelihood of gas line freeze? Modern fuel-injected cars have the fuel pump inside the gas tank. I believe at least some older carbureted cars used a mechanical fuel pump under the hood. So I wonder if that would affect the likelihood of moisture entering the fuel line. On a related note, from the many perfectly good hours I wasted listening to Car Talk back in the day, I learned that carburator icing used to be a problem (and I believe still is on GA airplanes). On a cold day the moisture in the air getting sucked into the carb can freeze and constrict air flow into the engine. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2025, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gas-line-freeze/1013222/29 "2025-01-23T22:26:23Z")
> [@WildaBeast](#): > > On a cold day the moisture in the air getting sucked into the carb can freeze and constrict air flow into the engine. That’s still an issue. The throttle bodies on modern cars (or at least some) still run hot coolant through them to keep ice from forming. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2025, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gas-line-freeze/1013222/30 "2025-01-24T17:27:55Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > ETA: windchill, mentioned in the OP, doesn’t affect inanimate objects like gas. Their temperature will not go below the actual ambient temp. Windchill is meant as a measure of how quickly the human body can lose heat in extreme cold and wind, leading to hypothermia. Just a slight nitpick (and if I’m wrong, a request for correction from those more knowledgeable) but I don’t think it’s about inanimate versus animate objects so much as warm versus ambient. A hot bar of metal in a wind tunnel will lose heat faster than the same bar in still air of the same temperature. And despite what you seem to imply, _people_ won’t ever get below ambient temperature either, no matter the wind chill factor. And while I’m sure warm inanimate objects will experience “wind chill” in the sense that they’ll cool faster in moving air, I’m not sure our quantitative measures of wind chill will apply to inanimate objects since it’s a subjective quantity intended to measure what the air “feels like” to humans who consume weather reports. There are also other factors that a metal bar wouldn’t experience, like moisture, evaporation and humidity, that I think come into play in modern “real feel” temperature measures. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gas-line-freeze/1013222.md?page=1)