Preparing for winter

mark085 wrote: »

How much did that set you back?
I wouldn't mind one

There are a few third party alarm installs that include that as an option. Very popular in the US, less so in our neck of the woods, because the US drive mostly autos so it's a little easier to set up compared to a manual gearbox for obvious reasons. Car left in gear previous night. Hit remote start, well hello car, what are you doing in my front room. There are ways around that of course and it does allow you to heat up your car and not have it nicked by scum(doors remain locked for a start). I had been tempted by the system in the past as my alarm has a module for the option, but thought against it.


I don't like leaving an injection engine running because the ECU will dump more fuel in to keep it running and this dilutes the oil keeping the pistons away from the cylinders. Wear is bad. So once I clear the windows, I start up, whack on the air con, freeze like an ice pop until my fingers go a funny shade of blue and drive off. In the old days of carbs the oil dilution was still in play, but a cold engine on carbs was more likely to stall on you even with full choke, so five minutes idling was probably worth the risk. Driving raises the temps faster than idling so the oil dilution factor is much reduced, doubly so in turbo cars which heat up even faster. Different engines heat at different rates I've found. Some are more cold running than others. The turbo cars I've had heated up the fastest.

The worst for it in my driving career was the car I learned to drive on, a Ford Capri. If your cold morning journey was half an hour, the first 20 minutes were like this;



Vainly checking the fan every five minutes. While the last 10 minutes when it finally(and near instantly when the thermostat opened) heated up were like this;



I suffered from freeze thaw action for many a year.

And I have heard of one definite hot water on windscreen crack happening. Was with an owner I knew of the same type of jalopy as me(Honda Integra). My Da™ used to throw boiling water on windscreens as a regular thing with no issue. As I suspect did many Ma's and Da's back in the day. I think that may be down to old cars having non bonded in glass. They were held in by rubber seals, so the glass had more room to expand with the temp changes. Bonded glass which is in damn near every car since the mid 90's is held in very tightly and there's little to no expansion room. Which can equal a dirty great crack.