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Comment by bernardom | Hacker News Reader

I've seen the wrong side of -40, when I was flying to work in Ft McMurray, Alberta for a consulting job.

One time, I drew the short straw and had to go pick up our SUVs at the parking lot upon landing. They were outside, plugged in.

The car started with the saddest sound I ever heard a mechanical thing make.

I put it in reverse, hit the gas, and pulled out of the spot. Then I put it in drive and hit the gas- and the car moved backwards. Every gear except for Park and Neutral did the same thing: reverse.

I reversed around the airport parking lot to the terminal and walked into the Hertz. When I explained the problem, they had clearly heard it before. "Don't worry about it. Just leave it on for a few minutes and you'll be fine. Transmission fluid's frozen."

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You didn't let it warm up?

In the Yukon, it's critical you let your car warm up. A block heater, battery blanket and oil pan heater are all needed, but they're only heating the actual engine block.

Think about how cold the oil in the transmission and diffs are.. let alone everything else.

You also want to drive extremely smoothly and slowly for the first ~5 mins to let everything circulate and slowly warm up to running temp - sudden moves or turns tears apart CV joints, and destroys other rubber seals.

These are aspects to driving vehicles most people do not even begin to need to think about.

Especially nowadays, I know that my 72 Chevy had a instructions for cold start (<32 I believe) on the back of the driver's visor which included idling for a few minutes. I've noticed people tend to turn their car on after getting situated but I still have a habit of turning it over as soon as I get in to let it warm up even though that car is, sadly, gone for now.

All the geegaws on a modern engine make it less important.

Hahaha.

Have you seen what engine oil looks like past -35C?

Butter. Same color, same consistency. You can cut and spread it with a knife. Those geegaws aren't helping there.

Also, there is a hell of a lot more in a vehicle that's sensitive to extreme cold than an engine.

Hohoho?

I said less for a reason. Most people don't have to worry about -35C. Cars start reliably down to fairly low temperatures, so they don't need to worry about it.

>Most people don't have to worry about -35C.

We're replying in a thread about someone trying to use a vehicle at -40C...

>Cars start reliably down to fairly low temperatures

Start? As the parent comment states, that's the least of your problems.

I replied to a comment that mentioned <32 Fahrenheit.

Sure, it may be less important, but I'd hate for someone to think that means it's majorly less important (in other terms, unimportant).. letting a car warm up in cold weather is good for it, regardless of innovations.

Most of the time it just wastes gas. Well, beyond making the cabin comfortable it just wastes gas.

My fave is when the wheels freeze to the ground; so when the noob guns it - since the truck seems reasonably warm, yet stuck - the drive shaft snaps. Depending which universal joint breaks, the flailing remains can cause impressive damage.

The tires are going to be "square" for the first twenty minutes anyway, so unless you really enjoy having the fillings shaken out of your teeth...

I'm from Yellowknife, about 1000mi north of Ft McMurray. More often than not, we hit -45C with a windchill of ~ -60c. The coldest it's ever been up here was -52c in 1947, if I'm not mistaken..

I'm from Regina, Saskatchewan and for the first time in my life, I can honestly say that our mere -45 windchills don't sound so bad. :)

Stay warm!!

Grew up in Saskatchewan as well (Prince Albert). So, so glad I live in Vancouver now. The people were great but the weather in PA was absolutely soul crushing throughout the winter. Vancouver rarely drops into the minus and we get maybe 1-2 snowfalls a year (which usually melt as it falls). Feel like it's the tropics over here whenever I get back from visiting family/friends in PA.

I'm originally from Saskatoon, and remember a day around 2004 or 2005 where it was in the -40s, -62 with the windchill. Once was enough - I can't imagine "more often than not"!

You must love the cold. I cannot fathom living in an area like that.

yeah, but it's a dry cold. Besides I don't mind the cold as much as I hate the darkness during the winter months.

I visited Changchun and Harbin one winter, as I was on the bus from the former to the latter, I watched the thermometer (ya, all these buses prominently displayed the outside temperature) drop from about -25 to -40...suffice it to say, my digital camera stopped working after about 5 minutes.

When I got back to beijing, it was only -10, I felt like I could wear shorts.

You need to warm a car for at least 15 minutes when it's that cold...

Even in Finland, with comparatively mild winters, cars have preheaters with timers, and most residential parking lots have an electric socket on each space for plugging cars in.

At least your power steering system was ok or you would have only been able to reverse in a straight line without the significant effort of wrenching on the wheel.

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