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Pastimes : Car Nut Corner: All About Cars -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JDN who wrote (274)	4/7/1999 11:33:00 AM
From: Greg from Edmonton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5787

Frozen vehicles: The remote starters are quite popular here, especially in winter. Although they are more complicated to install on manual transmission vehicles. My VW is a 5-speed so I don't have one. Here in winter typically all the vehicles have block heaters. The coolant is a mixture of equal parts ethylene glycol antifreeze and water, preferably ionized or distilled. Putting a cardboard baffle (or a winterfront) in front of the radiator reduces the chance of overcooling so the engine can warm up more quickly and provide reasonable heat for the occupants. And fuel line antifreeze for when the weather is very cold. Batteries must be fairly strong also to survive our winters, new ones are typically good for about 5 years or so. For my car I also have winter tires. I use synthetic oil, 15W50 for summer, and equal mixture 15W50 and 10W30 for winter. Actually with synthetic oil I didn't bother to plug in the block heater once this year. My winter startup routine (from unheated garage), I just start the engine for about 10 seconds and drive gently until the engine warms up, and never had a problem. Often the cars that die on the cold mornings in traffic are carbureted vehicles, I have noticed that the older Hyundai cars seem to fare the worst.