Auto Winterizing: Virtue or Necessity? (or both)

[brianormond]

-I have a sense of canny virtue & industry from the following today:

-A) rejected new car purchase to save money and avoid
this winter's wear & tear on new vehicle

-B) Ordered sticky snow tires for traction

-C) Kept old tires on as long as possible without sacrificing
safety/reliability/traction

-D) Flushed radiator of old vehicle, put in fresh anti-freeze

-E) Installed new battery (old one weak & unreliable in cold snaps
after 60 months)

-F) Changed oil

-There's something satisfying about doing what one can to prepare for something else on the way, greenhouse gas buildup aside. (but not very far aside...)
Discuss.

[jsluder]

My wife's solution is to refuse to drive whenever there's a hint of snow or ice on the road. (Guess who gets to drive her to the Park&Ride so she can still get to work.)

[MagicSailor]

Hi

-There's something satisfying about doing what one can to prepare for something else on the way, greenhouse gas buildup aside. (but not very far aside...)
Discuss.

A car pollutes far more during production and disposal than it does during it's working life. Keeping the old vehicle is an environmentally sound move, using it less and using more public transport would also be a good move. Getting rid of it and using only public transport would be an even better move. If none of these are possible, getting the engine tuned to reduce emissions and improve fuel economy would be a good move. Also driving in a way that saves fuel and reduces emissions. What I call "Mellow Driving".

After that, you might consider what other things you can do to reduce your impact on the environment.

Leave all extraeneous wrapping at the supermarket. Do the Corn Flakes really have to be in a plastic bag inside a cardboard box? Pototato Chips are just as fragile and are distributed in bags. If enough people do this, the supermarkets will get fed up with dealing with the extra trash and put pressure on the manufacturers. Also consider that the box may have roach eggs in it. I never bring cardboard from the supermarket onto the boat for that reason. Do not buy anything wrapped in styrofoam. Let the supermarket know why you're not buying it.

Exchange your showerhead for one that uses less water. Shower like I do on the boat. Get yourself wet, turn off the water, lather up, turn on the water and rinse off. (For the past six months I have used ONLY collected rainwater for washing myself and the laundry and cooking.) My watertank iis around 90 gallons. If I stopped collecting rainwater, that would leave me with ample water for a couple of months.

Change your lightbulbs for low energy bulbs. Learn which lights will consume less energy if you leave them on. A lamp, and particularly a fluorescent one consumes a lot of energy when starting up. If you have fluorescent lights in your bathroom and enough family members to have fairly frequent traffic, chances are you'll consume less energy by leaving them on.

Here on the boat, more than 90 percent of my energy comes from the sun. The remaining 10 percent are cooking gas and I run the engine on average an hour per week. Partly to top up the ship's batteries, but mostly because the engine needs to be warmed up every now and then.

I reckon my environmental footprint is something like 5-10% of the average person, but I am trying to improve on that.

Death to all SUV's!

Regards,

Owen Morgan

Yacht Magic
Anchored in the lagoon, St Maarten

My new blog.
Click here for my latest reported position. (Use the satellite view.)

[cowtime]

Sounds like you are ready for winter. Since I drive for my job I have to keep mine in top working order to the best of my ability so I am constantly checking everything. I wish I didn't have to drive when it snows. I hate that.

[anniemcu]

Sounds like you are ready for winter. Since I drive for my job I have to keep mine in top working order to the best of my ability so I am constantly checking everything. I wish I didn't have to drive when it snows. I hate that.

"Neither rain, nor sleet nor dark of night..."

[sbfluter]

Hey Magic Sailor, not to totally hijak this topic, but being a person living on a boat, do you see a lot of plastic debris in the ocean? I'm terribly concerned with this problem. I read some research on the garbage patch in the Pacific that horrified me.

[Lambchop]

Winter? What winter?

[brianormond]

-My heart goes out to you, Cowtime, for being on the road in bad weather doing mail service. I've experienced one Kentucky winter and learned to respect it fast despite a youth spent in colder country. The thought of spring can seem an indulgent fantasy in Kentucky, Tennessee too I've heard.

-I also have to get to work in bad weather so others can use public transit, my particular occupation. Taking transit to the job works at times and not others, so personal transport is important as are the upkeep needs of a reliable vehicle.

Mr. Sluder- Your wife has it wired. Have somebody else drive!

Best to you,
Brian

[cowtime]

-My heart goes out to you, Cowtime, for being on the road in bad weather doing mail service. I've experienced one Kentucky winter and learned to respect it fast despite a youth spent in colder country. The thought of spring can seem an indulgent fantasy in Kentucky, Tennessee too I've heard.

-I also have to get to work in bad weather so others can use public transit, my particular occupation. Taking transit to the job works at times and not others, so personal transport is important as are the upkeep needs of a reliable vehicle.

Mr. Sluder- Your wife has it wired. Have somebody else drive!

Best to you,
Brian

Don't you just love it when they issue those "don't get out on the road unless it's an emergency, conditions are much too dangerous" orders and you know that you have to go....

[MagicSailor]

Hi

Hey Magic Sailor, not to totally hijak this topic, but being a person living on a boat, do you see a lot of plastic debris in the ocean? I'm terribly concerned with this problem. I read some research on the garbage patch in the Pacific that horrified me.

I don't see so much out on the open ocean, but there are things that scare me. Last year I delivered a 31 footer single-handed from the Cape Verdes (off the west coast of Africa) to the Azores. I had a fishing line out the whole time as long as there was daylight. The only thing I caught in 16 days at sea was a bit of plastic with a small crab living in it. The crab fell off as I retrieved the plastic. Poor bugger had 4 kilometers to go before he reached the ocean floor. By then he would be the size of a pea from the pressure. What a way to go!

When I arrived in Horta, I signed on as crew on another boat and sailed from there to Gibraltar and then up to Almerimar on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. 12 more days at sea with a line out the whole time and we caught nothing. 15 years ago, catching a fish for dinner each day would have been taken for granted on a long ocean passage. You would stop fishing when you had enough or when you were fed up with fish. A friend of mine used to catch fish on his way across the Atlantic and dry or salt it and sell to the fish markets when he got there. He used to make 2-3000 dollars each passage. This last year I've caught one fish.

I see a lot of plastic floating about in harbour areas and of course that ends up in the ocean, but it's not really all that visible out there. One of the most disturbing things is that plastic molecules are found in the sand on beaches in remote places like Alaska, Greenland and the Antarctic far from human habitation. Nobody knows what this can do to living organisms, and once it's broken down into molecules (by UV and abrasion), plastic is forever.

Apart from the environmental aspect, there are other worries with plastic in the oceans. A plastic bag around the propeller can totally incapacitate a boat. This costs many lives every year. That's one of the reason I try never to motor myself into a situation I can not sail out of.

A friend of mine caught a big fishing net around his propeller off the coast of Portugal. With the help of another yacht that managed to keep him from ending up wrecked on the beach, he managed to clear the propeller and make it to port in Peniche. He had the whole monstrosity in the back of his cockpit. When he asked the harbourmaster what to do with it, he was told to throw it off the harbour wall.

Regards,

Owen Morgan

Yacht Magic
Anchored in the lagoon, St Maarten

My new blog.
Click here for my latest reported position. (Use the satellite view.)

[s1m0n]

Don't forget vaseline on the rubber seals around the doors and windows. If they get damp and then freeze, it's no only a b*tch to get into the car, but you're likely to rip the seals out by forcing the door open.

[brianormond]

-The door seal tip sounds good, and lubing locks with graphite for that extra-prepared feeling. -Snowshoes in the trunk, 25 Gs in small bills and an air ticket to the Caribbean too..

[MagicSailor]

Hi

-The door seal tip sounds good, and lubing locks with graphite for that extra-prepared feeling. -Snowshoes in the trunk, 25 Gs in small bills and an air ticket to the Caribbean too..

You can buy silicone grease for the door seals in a container that makes it easy to paint it on, or at least you can in more developed parts of the world, like Norway. Any service station would have them. Most service stations in Norway also have wonderful cheese and bacon hotdogs and fresh bread and they're open 25/7. They get the bread frozen and half-baked from the bakery and have an oven in the store. Almost any time of day you can walk in and pick up a loaf of bread that's still warm from the oven. Norwegian bread would almost be worth going back for, the stuff in the supermarkets here is crap...

Other useful items to keep in the car would be a shovel and a sack of sand, chains or snow grips for when you get really stuck, a length of good rope in case you have to be towed out of a snowdrift or tow someone else and a little spray can of that stuff to melt ice in your locks. Keep that in your bag or pocket, not in the glove compartment.

Or forget about all that and make it a one-way ticket to the Caribbean. Buy a sailboat and start living

I once left my car at an airport in northern Norway for a week. The weather varied between snow and rain for the whole week. Took me half an hour to get into the car. I had to open the hatch at the back, load my luggage and then crawl over it to get to the front. The car was covered in sheets of ice. Thankfully, she started with no problem and the heater eventually managed to thaw her out enough that I could get out and scrape the windows. Which reminds me you need a good ice scraper too...
I think I'll just do without Norwegian bread...

Happy Whistleblowing

Regards,

Owen Morgan

Yacht Magic
Anchored in the lagoon, St Maarten

My new blog.
Click here for my latest reported position. (Use the satellite view.)

[chas]

My wife's solution is to refuse to drive whenever there's a hint of snow or ice on the road. (Guess who gets to drive her to the Park&Ride so she can still get to work.)

My wife hates driving in snow, and worked for a long time at a hospital. I work where we often get the day off or at least delayed arrival when it snows. I turned it to my advantage. I got an Outback and (tongue in cheek) sold the idea to her by telling her I'd drive her to work on snow days. I did at least half a dozen times that winter. I love the 4-wheeling; having lived in Maine I understand driving in show, and on a few days 6-8 inches had fallen and even most of the major arteries hadn't seen a plow. She LOVED having me drive her in; when she had to drive through the snow, she'd invariably arrive late and tense.

I'll never go back to front-wheel drive. Not for the snow so much as for the rain.

[CHasR]

I wish I didn't have to drive when it snows. I hate that.

Snow's manageable. It's ICE that's the problem. Last St Patty's day here, (5am) the streets were 4- 4 1/2 inches of solid ice. I chopped my car out of hard ice at least a dozen times last winter.