got a 500 watt work lamp? put it under the engine tonight and try in the morning.
got a 500 watt work lamp? put it under the engine tonight and try in the morning.
Personally I wouldn't mess around with trying to start the cars today. If they're hard to start in the cold you're just going futz around in the cold today only to have to deal with it again in the morning. I'd put together a plan with a battery charger and maybe a space heater and some blankets for the morning and deal with it then.
For the ABS question. If you feel it cycle your choices are to either apply full pedal pressure and let the system work or release the pressure and try again to threshold brake.
In the old days people would put a coal shovel full of hot coals under the engine.
At least that is what i heard.
In reply to frenchyd :
Update:
midday it’s only minus 18 so a try and it fired up. Then I called and my reason for going was gone.
Minneapolis schools closed tomorrow so probably wil my school district. Not sure at this point what to do. Leave it running.? Leave it on the trickle charger? Leave it until tomorrow?
I would shut down and wait for the cold weather to be over, that is, unless you are low on supplies...
Have milk, bread, toilet paper, and most importantly, Beer?
actually, I would scratch the beer at those temps... that calls for a Hot Toddy or Gluehwein.
In reply to Apexcarver :
Had to google Gluehwein. It looks delicious.
This is kind of funny. -31f with a decent battery and modern oils is no issue. Never any problem in those temps sustained for several weeks even in my carbureted Land Cruiser. Power Steering wasn't happy for 15 minutes but let it idle for a bit then drive off.
If you have a block heater run it for a couple hours before. If not, don't worry about it Wear happens when you subject the machines to those temperatures for a long period of time, not one or two days.
You don't need coals or a heat lamp under the hood if your charging system is decent.
As long as school is called off, just leave the car alone unless you have somewhere else to go - it will be warm again on Saturday.
My car fired right off this morning, but it was in the garage and I parked a space heater in front of it overnight.
It was still -20F when I left the office for lunch, and it started fine again but boy was it stiff...the shocks, clutch hydraulics and the transmission felt like they were all filled with molasses. 
RX Reven' said:mr2s2000elise said:67F here and we have the heater running!
57F here (Southern California) but I was in Minnesota last week and I’m headed back next week.
Don’t know E36 M3 about the cold…had to spend ~5 min. scraping ice off my rental car (Hyundai Santa Fe) in a hotel parking lot…pretty sure I got a slight case of frost bite on my lips…again, don’t know E36 M3 about the cold.
Made it ~50 feet out of the hotel parking lot approaching a four-way intersection with the light against me…applied brakes (ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta) ABS kicking in and not slowing fast enough to stop short of banging into cross traffic. Nothing to lose so I went full hard on the brakes and the car started stopping quicker.
So, do new cars have some type of two-stage ABS where the peddle shudders to let you know you’re about to apply too much braking force?...again, don’t know E36 M3 about the cold and I’d like to get educated on stuff like modern ABS systems before heading back into it next week.
Any guidance?
Eeeek
i hope you get paid lots to go to Mn!!!
When abs engages your braking necessarily lessens. It’s cycling the brakes on and off, quickly. So the general rule is if your abs engages just slam on the brake pedal full and let the computers sort it out. Pulling the fuse is a ridiculous idea. The abs is better than a human if you use it right, and if you wreck with the fuse pulled you’re going to be in a world of trouble. I’m imagining a rental with the fuse pulled barreling into a crosswalk full of orphans. You, rotting away in prison, full of regrets. A broken old man, haunted by the memory of the orphans looks of terror as you helplessly slid toward them, you stare at the ceiling of your cell and mutter “damn you GRM!” as the life fades from your eyes.
New abs definitely has what feels like levels. Traction is different at each wheel and different every inch you roll forward. So imagine you're on ice and traction is fluctuating from 40-75% of what you would have on good pavement. Apply 50% brakes and you will get the tic, tic, tic, tic - only when available traction dips below what you have asked for.
Increase to 80% ask and abs will be on in full. And you will be stopping faster than when you were only asking for 50% (since the area under the curve of 40-75 is higher than the area under the curve of 40-50, by definition).
Early 90s abs would often detect one wheel slip (when 40-75 is available and anything more than 40 is asked for, you will get a slip sooner or later) and throw the whole thing into "just pulse the crap out of the wheels" mode. But now, the computer can really just unlock the wheel that needs unlocking, and it can unlock it just enough to get it rolling again rather than releasing brake pressure completely.
I would like to add to the above that it is quite easy to beat early 90s abs with threshold braking, because you can apply say 60% brake force when the traction is fluctuating between 40-75.
This is because those early braking systems would end up with some sort of braking average based on the on time vs off time. Say that was 50%. So your 60% constant would be better than the 50% of the 75% available the abs would max out at. Remember a big part of the goal of early abs was to allow the car to continue to steer, which means you can't use all your traction for braking anyway.
But modern abs is a different deal. Drivers cannot track and modulate 4 wheels independently. Let alone use that independent braking force to help control the direction and rotation of the car.
thatsnowinnebago said:In reply to Apexcarver :
Had to google Gluehwein. It looks delicious.
It most certainly is. If you have never had it, I highly recommend it for cold winters days.
I'm so glad that over my career, I've only been on 3 cold development trips. It wasn't a question of IF you should start the car, it was a requirement. And you had to do it as often as possible, which usually meant every 8 hours.
Cars are required to do unassisted starts to -20, assisted starts to -40. And that's been the case for a long time- so if you have a reasonably modern car (from the early 90's and on) it's been through it's paces, and should start in this weather.
I was hauling in Saskatchewan one winter and I didn't shut my Freightliner off for over three weeks. Checked the oil with it running. I had a tarp under the motor to try and keep some heat in it. Good times.
So glad my work trip to Detroit, which was supposed to be today, was canceled yesterday.
I'd just start it - we see those temps at least a couple times a year. Having a block heater plugged with make it a "nicer" start but any semi modern car with a decent battery will start. Sometimes LCD screens and electronics will be a little sluggish at that coldness. After -40 it starts to get a bit worse.
Dave said:I'd just start it - we see those temps at least a couple times a year. Having a block heater plugged with make it a "nicer" start but any semi modern car with a decent battery will start. Sometimes LCD screens and electronics will be a little sluggish at that coldness. After -40 it starts to get a bit worse.
The screen on the Mustang didn't go on this morning and I figured it broke but it came back to life when I restarted it later. It was stiff and hard to steer at first., that's for sure
I was debating going out yesterday to do more final moving, but decided that after 8 days straight of 20+ hour days I needed rest and the cold didn’t help. This morning my car was a little sluggish and the LCDs were comically slow but it started after a 3 second crank.
I used to put 2 100 watt incandescent light bulbs in the cowling of each engine , Continental IO- 520 series (aircooled) on a twin Cessna (310, 402 etc) , cover the cowling with an insulated cover and they would fire up at -30F.
Put a light bulb under the hood and fire it up in the morning.
All our cars, Mustang, Scion, Infinity, Toyota started today in the -20 morning. I remember in the 80's when it was this cold trying to start cars. Everyone was different. You had to pump the gas but if you did it too much it would flood. I worked in the service bay of a gas station. The boss would go drag in the cars that didnt start, we would usually change the oil, change 1/2 the spark plugs and fire it up. The boss made a lot of money when it got like this
The radio in my XC90 has an interesting temp related situation. At -20, the fm goes to 105.3. At -25, it only works with the dash speaker, and as you approach -30, it won't come on at all until there is some heat in the interior.
Kinda handy. "Must be cold. The radio won't work."
Mr2S2000elise,
I’m just the middle man between my employer and my wife…zero percent of a little is indistinguishable from zero percent of a lot…pay is irrelevant.
dculberson,
Tell me ghost of all things gloomy, is this the future that will be or the future that may be. Anyway, thanks for the super funny post.
Robbie,
Nice job of walking through the mechanics. Cliff notes: Don’t try to collaborate with the ABS…stay out of it or place your fate at its mercy.
In reply to frenchyd :
Yesterday in Cotton Minnesota it got to minus 56 F, not wind chill, actual temp.
And that was only good for the 5th coldest day on record.
Today when I started at 5:30 we were 2 to the good! I felt so warm I left my sweater off and used my light gloves.
In reply to pilotbraden :
When I was teeny tiny my folks went through a whole series of $50 cars. In the early 70's apparently you could buy "drivable" for that.
In Maine in the winter of 72-73 apparently it was just too much for the early 60's Karmen Ghia they had so my father heard about the light bulb trick. He put a drop light under the hood and decided to "insulate" it with some straw. Predictably this lasted until 3 am when being too cold became the least of that cars' problems as it burned to the ground.
TLDR: don't insulate hot bulbs with combustible material.
Side note: with the surge of LED and CFL bulbs, how long till this trick is something from the history books?
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