The winter is one of the most beautiful seasons of the year, but also one of the toughest for your car. Extreme cold conditions affect almost every single piece including electronics, electrical, and mechanical components not to mention fluids. However, by using some DIY car fixes you can solve many problems in the extreme cold weather.
The goal of this article is bringing you practical DIY car fixes to try during extreme cold that eases you from frustration and wasting time. Read on:
1. Thaw a frozen door lock
One of the most annoying situations during winter is not being able to enter the vehicle because of a frozen door lock. A quick DIY fix that you can try during extreme cold is pouring some ethyl alcohol in the door lock. The ethyl alcohol will thaw the ice in a matter of seconds. You can use alternative products that contain ethyl alcohol too, like hand sanitizer, or even perfume preferably in a spray.
2. Prevent side mirrors from freezing
Tired of finding your car side mirrors frosted every morning? A quick DIY fix for this problem is simply covering them during the night. The trick is using a ziplock bag or a plastic shopping bag that you can adjust with a rubber band at the end. Paper bags also work, but using anything plastic is your best option. Why? Because this fix is based on preventing the air humidity becoming ice overnight.
3. Prevent windshield from fogging overnight
Talking about humidity, do you know that you can prevent the car windshield from fogging overnight by avoiding humidity? There are some interesting DIY tips during extreme cold that you can try:
- You can fill a stocking with salt or cat litter and then put it near the windshield overnight to prevent humidity building up.
- At night before getting out the car leave the door open for a few seconds. That allows the dry air from outside to dehumidify the interior of the car. This great trick will save you a lot of time in the morning.
- Don’t leave any beverage inside the car. Avoiding moisture is a must to prevent a foggy windshield in the morning.
4. Prevent frozen wipers
Did you like the stockings trick? Well, here is another one. During extreme cold, you can try a simple DIY car trick that consists of covering the wipers with your stockings! Since you are protecting them from snow will be very difficult for wiper blades to freeze during the night.
5. Thaw frozen windows
Usually, side windows freeze during the night. That’s not a problem because you can thaw them easily using your own car heater. Just aim the vents to the side windows, select the warmer setting and turn on the car heater. This is a useful tip during extreme cold that requires no special tool, no special product to buy, just using what you already have at hand.
6. Fix frozen windshield
One of the main problem during winter with extreme cold is finding your car with a frozen windshield. Fortunately, you have learned some DIY car tricks already, let’s use them to thaw the windshield in no time.
- Turn on your car heater in “defrosting” mode, this usually directs warm air to the windshield. This will start fighting the ice from inside the car making easier the next steps.
- Have at hand a spray bottle with a solution of either ethyl alcohol with water (2 parts of water per each part of alcohol) or a saline solution (as much salt as you consider necessary). As you know by now, salt and ethyl alcohol are excellent to melt ice.
- Keep in your glovebox old plastic cards, they are really useful as “ice scrapers” and occupy no space. You can use one of these plastic cards while pouring the DIY solution and speed up the windshield de-icing.
7. Prevent headlights from freezing
Another good tip during extreme cold conditions consists of using toothpaste on your headlights.
- First, clean your headlights using soap and water as you normally do.
- Then apply toothpaste to the entire surface of the headlights.
- Wait for a minute or two and rinse with abundant warm water.
This simple treatment can restore the brightness of opaque headlights but also make it more difficult for the ice to build up.
8. Multi-purpose cat litter trick
We already talked about the moisture absorbent properties of cat litter in our tip #3. Now, we will extend the use of its convenient characteristics.
- You can put cat litter bags on your trunk to enhance your traction on snow and ice. A 25 lbs cat litter bag is inexpensive and can help a lot enhancing adherence to the road.
- If you get stuck you can use the same cat litter to provide more grip and getting out. Cat litter has many properties that can save you a lot of trouble during these situations.
- Last but not less, remember its moisture absorbing properties. You can make small holes in the bag to allow the cat litter to demoisture your trunk and car interior at the same time.
9. Emergency kit
Besides your usual emergency kit filled with tools, medicines, and more it’s a good idea to assemble an additional one loaded with some of the handy DIY solutions discussed during this article.
- A bag of two of cat litter and/or salt are excellent for many purposes as de-humidifying, melting ice, enhancing tires traction, and more.
- A shovel is a convenient addition during extremely cold weather.
- Plastic ice scrapers and/or old plastic cards.
- Spray bottle(s) with saline or ethyl alcohol solution.
- Water, energy bars, almonds, to keep you hydrated and active in case of emergency.
- Adequate gloves, snow boots, blankets, and clothing is a good thing to have in case your car breaks down during winter.