10 Car Parts That Tend to Freeze, Literally, When Winter Comes

A car is like a man: it is hot in summer and cold in winter. And when there are several consecutive days with negative temperatures, it freezes. Here are the parts you need to pay close attention to on these nights when the thermometers reach -20 degrees Celsius.

Perhaps the most popular freezing car part is the cheddar. Obviously, from the doors, when we want to get in the car after a frosty night we shoot hard and the door does not give way. Eventually, it opens, but we can also wake up that we can't get behind the wheel and that we have to get in the passenger seat. The solution that can prevent the door seals from freezing is to lubricate them with silicone. They will freeze but will open easily.

Lock

Also regarding the car doors, the lock also freezes here. Not many people open the door lock with a key, now everyone has a remote control. But even when you turn on the remote control, there is no mechanical movement meant to unlock the door.

Especially if, before the frost, it was a rainy day that let the water flow directly on the locking mechanism. In such cases where we cannot open the door due to the frozen lock, we must use those sprays and tap the door lightly to move the internal parts.

Window

The biggest mistake a driver can make in the winter, when it's freezing cold, is to open the windows.

Especially if you're a smoker. But when the temperatures are very low, the humidity freezes and firmly locks the glass in the frame on which it slides. Therefore, all the load that the crane motorist gives when you press the button forces it into the plastic parts that can break. Ideally, park your car in an underground parking lot with positive temperatures and wait for it to unlock.

Brake caliper

Another common mistake is to leave the parking brake applied overnight in the winter months. You will find that the rear calipers are locked in the morning, that is, glued to the discs, even though you have released the brake. The pads remain attached to the disc and the spring mechanism that releases them is also frozen.

The only good solution is prevention. But if it's too late and we have the rear brake locked, only the very hot water thrown over the caliper gets us out of trouble.

Engine hood

If you want to add windshield fluid or do something under the hood in the winter, you may not be able to open it. The hood would open, but the locking mechanism would freeze very often. You pull the crank with the cable inside, but nothing happens.

Here we have to apply the same solution, to leave the car warm when we go to see a movie at the Mall. Not infrequently I saw people walking under the hood in the winter in the covered parking lots.

Tailgate

It's the same with the tailgate or the trunk door when we have -10 degrees outside. You go shopping to buy the Christmas tree and when you want to put it in, you have nowhere to go, because the trunk doesn't open. Or, it opens, but the lock stays locked and doesn't close…

Here, as with the doors, we have to use specialized sprays on something like this, to dissolve the ice, but also to make sure in advance that the mechanisms are well greased with Vaseline.

Rim

I've seen cases where someone stopped vulcanizing this winter, even though he had just changed his winter tires, meaning the rims were recently removed, but he couldn't take them off.

More precisely, although they removed the studs for vulcanization, due to the cold, the rim "welded" to the hub and it took many aggressive blows to unlock it. It may sound like a toy, but ice water, even if it's a few microns thick, has huge sticking power.

Side mirrors

It happened to me once, after the woman drove the car and changed the position of the mirrors, to get behind the wheel one evening when it was -15 degrees in my town and when I adjusted the mirror, something cracked and fell directly on the asphalt. The side mirrors, like anything else moving in the car, risk freezing.

We need to make sure that there is no ice on the mirrors if we want to adjust them or allow them to heat up until they are clean, after which we can adjust them. Otherwise, you risk making the sucker mentioned above …

Planetary

Has it ever occurred to you to leave the car on a frosty day and hear a crack, as if something had broken? I used to think it was the plates that froze on the disk, but the mechanic told me it could be planetary.

Because he encountered cases in which the drivers were walking with broken planetary bellows and, in addition to Vaseline, the water that froze the steam also entered there. And when the driver left the place, the car stood still for several days, guess what: the end of the planetary gear broke. It didn't happen to me, but who knows … It's good to take a look at the planet's bellows sometimes.

LCD screen

One car that doesn't hurt if it freezes is the LCD screen. It doesn't matter if it's from the on-board display, the on-board computer, the navigation, or another display. It's a freezing liquid crystal display, obviously. You will find that the information shown moves slowly or not at all or that it has lost its intensity, but that's all.

It doesn't mean something is wrong. And, anyway, after the cabin heats up, it will return to its original state. Now, don't think that it's freezing like a turtle, it's just losing its viscosity, but enough to stop it from doing its job.