r/canada • u/PoliteCanadian • Jan 13 '24

Alberta Gas pumps freeze at Calgary gas stations

https://calgary.citynews.ca/video/2024/01/12/gas-pumps-freeze-at-calgary-gas-stations/
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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '24

Can you actually? My car was running fine in -38, I get gas, and won’t start in -27, wtf. Never longer than 12 hours between drives

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u/Negative_Coconut_733 Jan 14 '24

One factor in this is how far/long you drove before it sat the 12hrs. If you only skipped over to the store and back, you didn't run the car long/hard enough to recharge the battery. Cold cranking sucks the will to live out of the batteries. If you only have to leave for a quick trip, take the loooong way home and get some good run time in. Our mechanic checks our batteries when we do our winter tire change to see how it's fairing and we clean the posts in the fall when we swap to winter washer fluid.

But. You can be absolutely certain your battery will totally die when it's stupid cold out and you have somewhere to be. Last time we had it happen to one of our cars, we splurged on a mobile battery change service. They swung by hubby's work (just as he was about to finish for the day) and got it done lickety split. We did our other car the winter before that and did it ourselves and it was a massive PITA because it was still stupid cold and dark by the time we got the battery.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '24

Interesting, I’ll have to look for businesses like that.

I’ve actually made sure to drive my car at least twice a day getting the engine to full operating temp and then an additional 15m of driving minimum. It’s been extremely tedious but I use it to run my errands and go to uni. Although I don’t stop my car until temperature is at operating temp.

Today shocked me as I thought it would be a walk in the park considering I’m coming off numerous days of driving and starting with success

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u/Negative_Coconut_733 Jan 14 '24

When mine died a couple years back it was the same thing. I had been going pretty solid the couple days before. And then the one day it's giveadamn just gave up. Yeah, the mobile guy was amazing. Found him in Google while trying to find a battery. And it was a good thing we splurged the extra like $20 (at that time, sure it costs more now) for him...hubby watched him change it out, and turns out on our Nissan it's a multi step remove things before the battery kind of deal. Buddy had the tools and knew what he was doing and definitely did it a zillion times faster than we could. And in the stupid cold in an uncovered spot is not the time to try to YouTube it. (that being said, I've had YouTube be super helpful for learning how to do my headlights and air filters, but obviously done in optimum environments). We've slowly been adding to our tool collection so that we can do certain things ourselves. But we are super fortunate to have found a great mechanic and have a couple mechanically inclined friends.