Just thought I'd share some simple things about getting around in New England winters. First of all, always back into your parking spot. Why? Well, if it snows over night, and/or you get plowed in, you have a better chance of ramming your car out if you are going forwards. Plus, if your car should fail to start on a cold morning, it's a lot easier to jump start it, if the hood is facing the curb, rather than the trunk.
Have a snow shovel in the trunk. Also jumper cables. One dark morning, I get off the red eye and find the car, which was parked on the roof of the Logan garage, was completely buried in snow drifts. With the snow shovel it was 10 minutes of brisk exercise, and I was in the car on the way home. Without that shovel, no telling how long it would have taken to get the Logan workers to dig me out.
If you have a garage, take the trouble to put the car into the garage. Just an unheated garage will be 20 degrees warmer than outside. When it's 20 below, the garage will be at zero, and your chances of the car starting are a whole bunch better at zero than at 20 below.
Leave plenty of space between you and the car ahead of you. That clown ahead of you can spin out and block both lanes at anytime. A little extra distance improves your chances of getting stopped before you smash into him.
Keep your speed up climbing a hill. The momentum will carry the car over an icy patch. Without the momentum, the icy patch wins, you are stuck, and so are all the cars behind you.
After a snowfall, take the kitchen broom out and sweep the snow off the car. The car will warm up in the sun, if the sun can play on the bare metal. The snow is a mirror, reflecting all the sunlight and keeping the car stone cold. Again, just a 10 or 20 degree warming vastly improves the chances of the car starting from cold. Additional bennie, you won't have to chip ice off the windshield.
In real cold weather, you only have one start's worth of juice in the battery. Don't waste it by starting the car any more than you need to. Try to schedule engine start from the warmest part of the day, say 2:30 in the afternoon, that improves the odds of the car starting. Once you get her running, keep her running til the battery is fully charged again. Say 45 minutes of running. Another consideration, when the engine is stone cold, combustion gases blow by the rings into a stone cold crankcase. Where they condense and mix into your engine oil. The condensate from combustion is not nice stuff, water, acids, ugly corrosives, this stuff does your engine no good at all. You want to run the engine until the temp gauge reads good and hot, the heat will evaporate the condensates and keep your oil clean.
Happy motoring, and come up skiing. We need the business.
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