Things that don't work at 30 below

Appropriate to your post and your name, the plasticy bench seats in a '72 Waggoneer not only lose their cushiony properties, they transform into a substance of Granite like hardness and thermal conduction.

I had a car doing that once - it was a simple thermostat fix to get it to blow warm air again.

My van…

20w-50 in a '78 Chevette doesn’t work at -15 F. When I removed the dipstick, it pulled out a long string of oil, much as mozzarella streaming from a hot piece of pizza. I had to go buy a dipstick heater before I could start the car to drive it to where I could change to a thinner oil.

Take a guess at what happens to a car with a plastic intake manifold full of starting fluid and a sticking intake valve.

And it took 15 seconds for that message to flash by on the gas pump. Makes you want to press the “NO” button with an 8 lb sledge hammer.

I’ve had enough trouble with my power windows. Darn things don’t work when ice forms in the workings, as it so often does in winter months. I’d like to speak with a GM engineer (I drive a Chevy) on this matter.

I’d also like to know why it is so darn difficult to buckle and release the seat belt when one is wearing a parka and ski gloves. Honestly, I think they made these machines for those who live in Florida. I end up taking off my gloves (in -30C weather) just to put on and release the #%#% seat belt.

I love my Chevy, but there are a few things that indicate to me that Chevy engineers are all from Florida or Alabama. Places that never get really cold.

My guess would be… Nothing, good! :eek:
Sorry for your troubles, any kind of mechanic work in those kind of temps is a total PITA! :frowning:

Now, you know you’ve just got to post pictures, don’t you? :wink:

Yeah, at -20F it would indeed still be air, even in an unheated garage. You have to get a bit colder than that before the atmosphere freezes.

Me!

Besides that, my stooped windshield wipers. The dolts who built the car didn’t realize that putting them in a recessed groove was a sure way to have them freeze in with ice and snow.

They realized it. Various cars have been made that way since the '60s.

There’s a commercial on right now that says something about how some car thing is, “Engineered for life in Canada*,” and my response every time is, “No, it frigging isn’t. Nothing is designed for Canada.” We make it kind of work. Sort of.

*Paraphrasing from (most likely inaccurate) memory.

'Cuz it’s engineered for Canada…

The power windows were the first thing to quit working on my dad’s 1990 Suburban. I can’t pin down the exact year, but it shouldn’t have happened that early, considering that the vehicle had never been exposed to much extreme weather.

I live near Buffalo and decades of Johnny Carson jokes have the whole world thinking it’s either 4th of July or Winter here. Listening to y’all from Canada makes me feel like I’m in the tropics. :smiley:

By the way, when some of you are saying really scary numbers, is it Farenheit or Celcius?

Should have taken pictures. Imagine a V6 with the entire upper part of the intake gone. All of it. Not a hole or a crack, the entire upper section.

When it’s 40 below, does it matter? :wink:

Winner.

To give you a straight answer, it’s usually Celsius. Some of us give temps in both scales, but we usually put C or F behind both. :slight_smile:

Batteries work worse and worse as the temperature drops and when I had a stamped steel heater adjustment lever break off in my fingers I began to wonder about the technological capabilities of creatures that developed in the butt end of the Goldilocks Zone.