[dassub]

My car has an inch of ice all around it, I can't open the doors at all, and scraping is pretty difficult and would likely take forever. I guess I might have to take my wife's car (it's in the garage) if I can't get in mine for work Monday morning..

[CaptChaos]

That's some serious ice! How about using hot water around the door seams?

[Treize]

Same situation here... but we also had no power from 1030am to about 4pm.

[TeinBMW]

How water should work

[dassub]

Well, I ended up scraping around the driver's door and started the car. I couldn't get the windshield ice off, so I opened the window and made my way into the garage.
Now the heated garage will thaw the rest of the car out
Wife's car is on the driveway now, will deal with it tomorrow morning, but it shouldn't be half as bad as mine.

[kalamokid]

had exact same problem OP.

I learned my lesson. Next time I am moving the car into a U/G.

Car sat outside since Friday, so 2 nights of freezing rain.

Ended up spending 40 mins carefully scraping my door window and clearing the ice around the door seal. Opened the door and started he car, let it run for about an hour with the heat on....

[MrPig]

That was my car earlier today .. Spent 40 minutes scraping the windows with the heater and defrosters on full power. That's after spending 30 minutes trying to get in.

[Kid Eh]

A little bit of hot water makes life a LOT easier.

[BigFoig]

Just poor hot water down the car which requires immediate access. Since it's not like minus 35 out. It won't freeze on contact. A good way to thaw out car too is take it to a coin Op or touchless wash. Those places have hot water in the guns.

[adriang]

I had to leave my car outside at a friends house since I didn't want to risk driving home and in the morning I had ice all over my car. I was able to get in pretty easily without a struggle and turned on all heating. After about 10 minutes I started scraping the front and rear windshield and check the picture to see what I did about the door windows!

[adriang]

.

[kanhai05]

Crawled in thru the trunk pushed door open

[335alive]

gingerly broke the ice around the driver's door using the back of my ice brush like a mallet, but not hitting hard. Just enough to allow the door to open so I could get in to start the car.

Left it running for about 20 minutes with defrosters on full, and heat at the highest setting. Once it had warmed up, I again used my snow brush like a hammer to break the ice all around the car, while not hitting hard enough to do any damage.

Once the car has warmed up a bit, it creates a pocket in between the ice and the car which made it much easier to break it up into manageable pieces, and sweep it off the car.

Still took the better part of an hour, but no hot water involved, and no damage done.

[dulak]

I followed 335alive's method. Gently tapped all around the door like a mallet and pried the ice out. Didn't bother with the ice around the car other than all around the doors, trunk and windows.

I would never recommend hot water specially near the glass as you can crack it due to the extreme temp. differences involved with frozen windows and hot water.

I actually saw it happen to someone yesterday. They used hot water to melt the ice around the door and next thing you hear is a big "crack".

[335alive]

One thing I have to say about all this, partially triggered by the post above;

"Didn't bother with the ice around the car other than all around the doors, trunk and windows."

PLEASE DO NOT DRIVE unless you have removed ALL of the snow/ice off of your car. Not just some; not just most; ALL!!!

Cutting out the windows and doors isn't good enough. I was on the 410 yesterday and saw a 4x6 sheet of ice blow off the roof of an SUV, soar about 10 feet in the air, before almost smashing into the front of the car following. I also saw an F-150 pulled over on highway 9 with his entire grille and left headlight missing, and a huge chunk of ice hanging out of the ragged hole where his grille used to be.

Once your car gets up to operating temperature, an air pocket can form between the ice and the surface of your car. Once you get up to a certain speed, air/wind can get in this pocket and lift the ice off of your car. This is not only lazy, but it can potentially be dangerous to people's personal property or, even worse, their lives.

If you have to go out, and your car hasn't been cleaned since the storm, give yourself extra time to clean the ENTIRE car, or do everyone else a favour and just stay home. It could be the difference between life and death for someone following you on the roads.

Merry Christmas to all!

[cruzine]

Originally Posted by 335alive

One thing I have to say about all this, partially triggered by the post above;

"Didn't bother with the ice around the car other than all around the doors, trunk and windows."

PLEASE DO NOT DRIVE unless you have removed ALL of the snow/ice off of your car. Not just some; not just most; ALL!!!

Cutting out the windows and doors isn't good enough. I was on the 410 yesterday and saw a 4x6 sheet of ice blow off the roof of an SUV, soar about 10 feet in the air, before almost smashing into the front of the car following. I also saw an F-150 pulled over on highway 9 with his entire grille and left headlight missing, and a huge chunk of ice hanging out of the ragged hole where his grille used to be.

Once your car gets up to operating temperature, an air pocket can form between the ice and the surface of your car. Once you get up to a certain speed, air/wind can get in this pocket and lift the ice off of your car. This is not only lazy, but it can potentially be dangerous to people's personal property or, even worse, their lives.

If you have to go out, and your car hasn't been cleaned since the storm, give yourself extra time to clean the ENTIRE car, or do everyone else a favour and just stay home. It could be the difference between life and death for someone following you on the roads.

Merry Christmas to all!

+1

I had it happen to me, was behind a Murano on the 401 and next thing you know the sheet of ice on the roof went flying off and unfortunately landed on my windshield. The good thing was it was relatively thin layer of ice and had broken up a bit in smaller chunks from the wind speed before hitting my windshield. But based on how loud it sounded I wouldn't have been surprised if my windshield had cracked.

[dassub]

I've got frost on the inside of my windshield now, that's never happened before.
Sucks to clean this stuff, gotta wait till the interior is warm before I can get rid of it.

[dulak]

Originally Posted by 335alive

One thing I have to say about all this, partially triggered by the post above;

"Didn't bother with the ice around the car other than all around the doors, trunk and windows."

PLEASE DO NOT DRIVE unless you have removed ALL of the snow/ice off of your car. Not just some; not just most; ALL!!!

Cutting out the windows and doors isn't good enough. I was on the 410 yesterday and saw a 4x6 sheet of ice blow off the roof of an SUV, soar about 10 feet in the air, before almost smashing into the front of the car following. I also saw an F-150 pulled over on highway 9 with his entire grille and left headlight missing, and a huge chunk of ice hanging out of the ragged hole where his grille used to be.

Once your car gets up to operating temperature, an air pocket can form between the ice and the surface of your car. Once you get up to a certain speed, air/wind can get in this pocket and lift the ice off of your car. This is not only lazy, but it can potentially be dangerous to people's personal property or, even worse, their lives.

If you have to go out, and your car hasn't been cleaned since the storm, give yourself extra time to clean the ENTIRE car, or do everyone else a favour and just stay home. It could be the difference between life and death for someone following you on the roads.

Merry Christmas to all!

Well yes, I didn't bother with the rest of the ice till the car warmed up. There was no way I would chip the ice as I may have damaged the body. Once the car warmed up I just lifted the slabs off with my fingers after that. Took me an entire hour and a half to do it.

Couldn't pry off some of the ice even after warming the car and chipping away at it. Its still on and refuses to budge. Will try the auto wash this weekend.

Hope everyone had a safe and Merry Christmas.

[dassub]

Some of the scratches I've put on my car because of the ice are pretty epic.
I guess it had to happen sometime, after owning this thing for 5 years.

[335alive]

dulak I wasn't personally attacking you; my apologies if you took it that way, as that was not my intention.

I didn't have a problem getting all the ice off my car before leaving; as I mentioned, I just gingerly tapped on the ice once it was warmed up, enough that it broke apart and I could remove it. I did not hit the ice hard enough to even have the potential to cause any damage to the vehicle underneath, and upon close inspection after the fact, I see no damage done.

As a disclaimer, I got to the ice almost immediately after the storm, so perhaps it hadn't had as much time to "bond" to the car, nor did it stay on the car during the extremely low temperatures in the days immediately following the storm. This could potentially be a reason why all of the ice on my car came off so easy, while you might be experiencing problems with some stubborn bits that might now be "fused" to the car because of the low temperatures that followed.

Hopefully with the warm weather today, a lot of this ice has melted and life will be a lot easier for all of us LOL.

Hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday, and continues to do so!

[dulak]

Originally Posted by 335alive

dulak I wasn't personally attacking you; my apologies if you took it that way, as that was not my intention.

I didn't have a problem getting all the ice off my car before leaving; as I mentioned, I just gingerly tapped on the ice once it was warmed up, enough that it broke apart and I could remove it. I did not hit the ice hard enough to even have the potential to cause any damage to the vehicle underneath, and upon close inspection after the fact, I see no damage done.

As a disclaimer, I got to the ice almost immediately after the storm, so perhaps it hadn't had as much time to "bond" to the car, nor did it stay on the car during the extremely low temperatures in the days immediately following the storm. This could potentially be a reason why all of the ice on my car came off so easy, while you might be experiencing problems with some stubborn bits that might now be "fused" to the car because of the low temperatures that followed.

Hopefully with the warm weather today, a lot of this ice has melted and life will be a lot easier for all of us LOL.

Hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday, and continues to do so!

Hey not a problem mate. I figured you were passing on the safety message after having witnessed quite a few near misses I realize after reading back my message that I've given the impression of not cleaning the truck off at all.

Yes, my truck was sitting out in the ice for 2 days hence my difficulties.

Anyhow hope everyone has a Happy New Year!