When I first moved to the frozen north, I didn’t realize that when the thaw begins, you need to get the last of the ice off the top of your vehicle. A good 3" of ice slid down the front of my car and onto my windshield. Scared the crap out of me. Luckily, I was in a parking lot.
I had Florida plates at the time, so if anyone noticed, they were probably thinking, “Idiot.”
Watch the weather. Don’t we all to some extent?
They said 40% chance of ice, sleet & or snow for here.
We had something we needed to do starting at 1PM to make the 30+ miles to the event. Do the event and come home. 4-5 hours.
Took the big extension cord out, put a trickle charger on the Subie battery and put a 1500 W heater on the passenger floor boards, if it was the old Blazer, I would also plug in the heater block magnetically clinging to the oil pan with it’s lead stashed behind the front grill.
Either way, ain’t no frost, ice, snow on me, ain’t no frost, ice, snow on me, as the puppy says.
24 hours straight of this might cost me $2.
If it was unnecessary, unplug and let the wife drive me in the good car.
I drive the old junk when bumps & ditches may be in our future. She lets me do that.
RainX™
Pledge lemon furniture polish, works better than RainX™.
Windshield wiper jug that is not empty.
Luke warm water with or without additives.
Do not leave old style parking brakes applied. Actually no kind of clamping brake even like new cars because while driving that wet day, it could be wet and as the temp goes down, so does your ability to release the parking brake. Rarely happens but when it does…
Now, when your airplane had to sit out over night and is covered in nasty thick frost, it is before dawn, below freezing for sure & the boss / customer is standing there wanting to go and why was I not ready, we landed before midnight, why was I not out here earlier… Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…
I super hate changing wiper blades, they defeat me every time for I seldom need to do it because I treat them with gentle respect and protection.
I’d rather change a tire in the rain than try to replace a wiper blade in a cold rain.
YMMV
Our region has a problem with mobile igloos.
Yeah, that is my typical vehicle adornment in January - March. It is a pretty cool look. $110 huh? I have never gotten a ticket for it in New England but that sounds like a pretty good deal. It beats the hell out of scraping and brushing and brushing and scraping over and over again for what seems like an eternity. I don’t like snow and refuse to acknowledge it as much as possible.
I don’t shovel out parking spaces either. That is why I have 4-wheel drive. I just get some small amount of space cleared away from the wheels and they just rock, ram and power my way out of that shit. Clearing the parking spot itself is Mother Nature’s job. I will just park on top of the snow until she gets around to it.
The people that get me are the super-scrapers. They are the ones that will not drive an inch as long as their a single flake anywhere on their car (even if it is still snowing). I have seen detailing jobs that took less time and weren’t as thorough. I swear that some of them must start with a standard scraper and work their way down to a very fine paint brush to get down to the level of perfection they demand. It doesn’t hurt me or anyone else but I scratch my head when I see them suffering for an unfathomable amount of time to achieve something that could be easily fixed by a quick cruise down the highway.
This is just one more thing I am anal about. I will not move my car until every bit of snow and ice has been removed. Since I live in the Adirondacks, this takes some dedication. When snow is expected, I make sure there is plenty of gas in the car, the car is backed into the driveway (makes it easier to drive out into the thick snow in the street) and the wipers are left in the antennae position.
I am just as thorough about shoveling out my driveway.
No Doper in recorded human history has ever driven too slow in the left hand lane, checked out too many items through the express lane, had their children misbehave in a restaurant, or overstuff an overhead compartment on a plane.
Years ago an anti-frost technique that turned into a fad in this part of the world, then suddenly disappeared, was to drape a cloth over the entire windshield and close the car doors on each overlapping end. Oilcloth worked best, I think, because of its relative stiffness. Dunno where it would be still available. Fabric stores?
All that would remain to scrape would be the side windows, the rear having its own defroster.
I have this problem as well. Say today it was 43 degrees and I didn’t pay attention to the weather to see that it will be 17 degrees in the morning. I have an appointment at 8:00 a.m. I leave the house at 7:35 a.m. and see a layer of frost.
No time for that cleaning shit. Duck down and peer through the hole. Roll down windows to see both ways. Hope I don’t need a rear view until the defroster works.
I know it isn’t ideal, but it happens to all of us from time to time.
And being late happens to all of us from time to time too, and that’s what you should be doing here, instead of being an asshole.
My next abode will have a garage, that’s all I’m saying. It’s on the list of “shit that must already be there, even if it’s old”.
LA resident here, I have a question about snowy windows. Is there a layer of ice under the snow that’s stuck on the windows that you still need to scrape off, or can you just brush off the snow and the window will be fine?
Over here, occasionally we’ll get frost on the windows that I can’t brush off, I have to use the squeegee to scrape off. If I could just brush it off, I’d rather deal with snowy windows than frosted ice windows
Depends on different factors. If I park my car for the night and it starts snowing a nice dry snow a few hours later then it is just a quick brush. If the snow is wet and it gets colder or if I was driving my car with the heater on and it is snowing before the car cools then I can end up with melting/refreezing on the windshield which results in wonderful little icy lumps all over the windshield.
I tend to use a windshield cover every night to avoid the whole scraping thing.
I had to google windshield cover, never seen one of those before!
Can I add to the rant? Not so much cleaning off snow and ice, but turning on the headlights.
If it’s twilight or overcast or it’s foggy, raining, or snowing, TURN ON YOUR FUCKING HEADLIGHTS. I don’t care if it’s not yet sundown, because I really would prefer to know you’re on the road rather than encountering you unexpectedly closely.
I just ordered one. I suspect it will be stolen in short order, but for $10, it’s worth a try.
I don’t do winter. Here in the Dominican Republic we don’t have that type of problems. Why live anywhere else?
AMEN!!!
Beware of LED headlights if winter in your locale means ice and snow.
My family used to do that, but we used old vinyl tablecloths, the ones with the fuzzy side so they don’t slide on the table. We already had them, so it was free. Put 'em fuzzy side down and you were good to go.
See, this is why I read the Dope. I came in this thread for a little masochistic self-flagellation, since, courtesy of a busted heater and thus non functional defroster, I am one of those assholes who piss off Frank so mightily. (Today I had to scrape off the inside of my windshield.)
I leave with a couple of good tips that I’m totally going to try. Thanks for starting this thread, Frank! I’ll think of you tomorrow when I’m driving to work at 20 mph, wondering if I’ll get there before I lose a finger to frostbite!