nkgosselin

I was a bit hazy this morning after a few too many Mickey's last night with some co-workers. So, when I walked outside this morning and saw the snow covering my 944 race car I thought, 'gee, that's pretty.'

Walked the dog, that is not a euphemism, came back past my race car in the driveway and thought, 'hey, that's pretty. How cold did it get...OH MY GOD IT DOES NOT HAVE ANTI FREEZE IN IT!"

Combine track rules that do not allow you to run anti-freeze because it is slippery stuff with an unseasonable 17 degree low last night in Denver and you have a potentially cracked block.

I tossed the dog back inside and popped the hood to inspect. I squeezed the upper radiator hose and it felt like I was squeezing a Big Gulp full of Slurpee. The overflow was slushy.

Ugh. I opened the radiator drain and a trickle came out, but that trickle soon froze over.

I poured hot water over the upper radiator hose and overflow.

I am no gambler but I jammed the key in the car and turned it over. And then I waited and waited for something bad to happen. It didn't. I think I caught it just in time as today is not supposed to get over 32 and tonight drop back down to 25.

The running warmed the radiator enough to start to flow out quickly.
I drained about a gallon out and added a gallon of undiluted anti-freeze. This should be good for protection down to 5 or ten degrees above zero.

The good news. The quickening of my pulse chased the remnants of the malt liquor rather quickly.

Checked the oil, it seemed good so no major cracks. Won't know if I avoided all damage until I run it in anger in a couple of weeks.

m73m95

I grew up in Bailey (about 30mi SW of denver) and a buddy of mine had a beat up POS that he raced at Colorado National..... we did the same thing, only Jack Daniels came to the rescue!

He kept the car in a rented garage about 15min away. It was the week before we were going to put the car away for the winter, and got an early freeze/snow. It got down to about 10deg. The block looked fine so we fired it up. As the water got warm we discovered the radiator had popped a few tubes, but the engine was fine. We replaced the lost water with what we had around (Jack) and was fine until we put the car up for the winter.

Damian in NJ

Yeah, you guys screwed up my tv schedule tonight by canceling the game due to snow.

Arominus

Damn sneaky cold weather, I was running water until 2 weeks ago and thankfully i got it changed out. No problems getting it started this morning either. I'm glad you didn't pop your motor! Oddly enough i'm feeling the hangover today as well :P The laughing lab had my number last night.

V2Rocket

i love not having seasons

ZW 944

Hehe, I had a similar problem last winter when troubleshooting my heater not working (one of the hoses to the heater core had been replaced with a cheapo straight on that had kinked) Well, the car had only water in it, and it froze in the pipes, but thank God it was ok in the engine.

Tom R.

yeah this freeze is not fun. i was in a t shirt last sunday triming a bush. can only put out 10 bags a week or 5 cans. got that bush into the bags, and i was planning on trimming the one on the other side this weekend.

that will wait until after i blow out the sprinkler system tomorrow when it warms up a little.

glad no major damage kevin. im trying to go to HPR this fri sat and sun.

drift a 944

hmm, that is arguably better than the 95 degree days we have had this week here in Orlando.

I'm sure the freezing weather can be annoying at times though.

xsboost90

good idea though- we have water in the lemons car- guess i'll put antifreeze in it before i store it for the winter.

M758

Even here in Az I have to worry about that a bit. Once in 9 years we had cool enough spell over night to cause the lower radiator hose to pop due to an overnight freeze. It is pretty common to get an overnight freeze here in winter, but cold enough to freeze radiator water is rare. Still I felt lucky on that.