It’s Cold
Last week’s storm dumped about 2 ft of snow on us. I think we hit a daytime low of -15F (-26C). Damn cold.
Still, Bode had his first week of ski team and he had a blast. We’ll be at the mountain every Friday at 8:30 AM from here on out.
We met a few of the coaches. “Toad” runs this part of the Competition Center and seems like a cool guy. Exactly who should be running a ski team for kids. Baseball, football, basketball… your coach probably won’t be named Toad.
All the kids in Bode’s group are around his age and it’s an ‘all-mountain’ group. It’s for fun. No spandex and shin guards just yet.
Not surprisingly, the bus would not start at -15F. It weakly turned over a few times and sputtered a bit. Then, the battery cut out. It had never given me issues before, so I’ll just chalk it up to the cold. I think I bought the battery in Argentina (or Chile), so it’s got some miles on it. I don’t have a charger, so for now, it’s either take the (other) bus or wait for warmer weather.
Switch the engine and tranny to Mobil 1 and it will help a lot on the extreme cold. I even re-filled my steering box with Mobil 1 gear lube due to cold steering in zero weather. If you run an extension cord out to your engine compartment to a trouble light above the battery it will help keep it useable BUT they make a dipstick heater plug-in that will warm up the engine oil enough to really help- I had 6 volt busses in Mammoth that always started by using these tips!
I seem to remember all of the cars in Minnesota had 110 AC plugs sticking out of their grille. ENJOY!
Rusty – what viscosity did you run at cold temps? I’m still using 20-50, but it’s like molasses at -15F and strains to turn. At +15F, the bus starts right up…
Up here in the northland (Canada), when we used to run the buses in the winter (pre salt days)..we used either 5W-30 or 0W-30 engine oil and had the electric heater that bolted to the oil strainer when it went below -10F. And of course a battery in tip top shape.
Ditch that 20W-50 stuff, that’s summer weight oil….you’re just killing what battery power you have left getting the starter to turn over a frozen engine block.
I broke a crank shaft once when I jumpstarted 1961 6volt Karmann Ghia in -20 weather.