This morning, my sweetheart and her cousin were getting ready to go shopping and such, and I realized I wouldn’t be able to borrow her (plugged-in) vehicle to go get my daily fix of Tim Horton’s [del]crack[/del] coffee! Well, nothing to do for it but dig out my 98 Civic from under a week’s worth of snow, in the -30 celsius (-22 F) cold. Now, mind you, this car doesn’t have a block heater, so the engine IS at -30C.
I hop in, turn the key, tell ol’ Betsy how much I love her, and the like, and… and… and… she starts!!
Awwwwh, now I want Tim Horton’s. One of my last meals before leaving the US for damn near forever was a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee, a donut, and breakfast sammie.
I can sometimes get my brother to send me a container of Tim Ho’s coffee, but they are just so much better at making it than I am. Probably because I don’t have access to food-grade cocaine.
Mum has a Rover 45, essentially a Honda Domani/Civic with a Rover engine. It really is an example of how (now that bits fall off and don’t work here and there after only 50k miles) it’s not just the design, but the workmanship that matters.
I really should get one installed, shouldn’t I?
I just don’t drive it that much, seeing as how I’m almost always using either my work truck (Ford Exploder) or Sat^Gal’s Mazda CX-7…
S^G
And here I thought my 97 Saturn starting up easily in 5F was an achievement this morning. But -22? Wow! You beat me. Fortunately it doesn’t usually get that cold here. It’s been known to happen, but not often and not for long.
No. It may have insulated a bit for a few hours, but the car would reach ambient temperature pretty quick. It might prevent a bit of radiation heat loss to space, but it would still be at least as cold as the air.
I’m kinda surprised you can get them w/o one. I left my '03 Malibu plugged in for 30 minutes this afternoon (~-25 IIRC) and still didn’t like what it sounded like. 'Course it’s probably the belt and the compressor and such that make strange noises for 5 minutes, and the block heater is never going to get them warm. I made sure to put it in my “garage” for tonight.
(And since I went and measured it, my block heater draws a steady 360 watts, or about 1/4 what a decent kettle does).
I was an adult before I learned cars don’t come with block heaters - living in the Prairies all my life, I just assumed that all cars had a plug hanging out the front to plug them in with in winter. It still doesn’t make sense to me that dealerships get cars in without block heaters - just order them installed, would ya? Calgary has nice winters, but we still get a couple of good cold spells, plus all the people travelling to the mountains for skiing, where it is always good and cold. And going home to Saskatchewan, of course.
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