“Prepare a sleigh in the summer,” our naive ancestors said, not even realizing that their distant descendants living in the 21st century would have to deal with a more complex device that surpassed the sleigh both in capabilities and in the number of related problems. Our goal now is to minimize the frequency of these accidental incidents and not to take elementary illiteracy or laziness as bad luck.
Introducing the top 10 most effective ways to get your car in the cold.
10. Pay attention to battery status.
Before severe frosts, the responsible car owner needs to properly prepare his battery for serious tests. To do this, unscrew the filler plugs and check if there are any ice there. The icy areas inside the battery are quite a dangerous sign - most likely, you will have to purchase a new one. In extreme cases, pour distilled water into the battery and wipe it.
Experts recommend that during severe frosts, remove the battery at night and take it to a warm room. For women, this option is not very acceptable, because most of them will be quite tiring to wear a battery every day. In this case, you can limit yourself to buying a heater for the battery.
9. Low quality gasoline
If unscrupulous employees of gas stations add less quality fuel to gasoline, then this, of course, will affect the work of car parts. If gasoline was mixed with water, then at low temperatures it will freeze along with condensate. This can damage the operation of the entire fuel system, as well as one of its sections. A reliable sign that you are faced with a similar problem is that the motor does not “catch” against the background of the normal functioning of all other systems, while the candles remain dry, and instead of the usual exhaust “aroma”, the smell of unburned gasoline appears.
How to check what is the proportion of water in the fuel you use? To do this, hold an open flame over a small spot of gasoline at a distance of 5 cm. If it does not ignite, it means that there is too much water in this fuel, which prevents the evaporation of hydrocarbons.
8.
Before starting the car, you must prepare your battery for this. To do this, turn on the rear window heating and fog lights, and turn on the dipped or main beam for a few seconds.
7. Two turns
In the cold season, especially when biting frosts come, the rule of “two turns” becomes relevant again for motorists. Insert the key, turn 1 time until the moment the lamps on the dashboard light up. Wait a bit - at this time the electronics will carry out diagnostics and the fuel pump will be activated. After that, you can scroll the key to the end and try to start.
6. If the lock is frozen
In this situation, there are several solutions. First: in case of not very severe frost, you can try to warm it with your breath, that is, blow the lock through your palm folded with a “wheel” or by inserting a hot key into it. If such measures do not bring the expected result, then you can pour boiling water over the castle. If even after this the lock continues to be in a frozen state, then you should try using a keychain-defroster or a warming spray. Another express way to defrost a lock is to pour ordinary ethanol there.
5. Do not leave the car on a handbrake all night
This is fraught with the fact that the brake pads simply freeze. However, if our advice is a little late, and this trouble has already happened to you, then you can try to cope with it with the help of mutual assistance from motorists. Ask another motorist to direct the exhausts of his car to the wheel of your “iron horse”.
4. Tug
If all of the above recommendations do not give the proper result, then you can try to start the car with a tug. Keep in mind that you must be extremely careful when towing. It’s better, of course, to do this on an empty enclosed area and not during extremely low temperatures, however, as you know, anything happens in life, so in a pinch you can take a chance.
3.
In cold weather, the car is best stored in a garage. If for some reason you do not have such an opportunity, then leave the car in a guarded parking lot. This will allow you not to put the car at night on an alarm, and due to which a significant part of the load will be removed from the battery, and this will increase the chances that in the morning you will spend less time on starting the engine.
2. Pay attention to engine oil in advance.
Excessive thickening of engine oil is another reason for car difficulties in winter. Thick oil introduces problems into the engine starting process. This can happen if you use the oil after the end of its service life, or if it is not the right type. To avoid additional difficulties with the car in the cold, make sure that the oil you use is of high quality.
1. Spark plugs
A car may “refuse” to start as a result of problems with spark plugs. Nagar and a broken insulator lead to the fact that the candle can no longer give out a spark, but if this still happens, then the spark turns out to be too weak.
This problem can be solved by piercing the candle electrodes in the flame of a gas stove.