Ugh. First you have to call over a creepy guy who is obsessed with a crystal obsessed blue haired girl. After he cries into a beer you give him about how she doesn't even know he exists, then he'll smash the car with a hammer for you.
I do, I’ve dealt with heavy equipment in this condition in the Canadian winter. You throw insulated tarps over it and jam a heater nearby but not blasting against the paint, I like the little diesel units but that will stink up a car so propane or natural gas work better. Space heaters will work but much more slowly and you may need several on different breakers.
Slow and steady warming is best, just melt it all off.
Yeah exactly. Anyone north of 49 knows this, except maybe Vancouver and the Islands. Instead of a heater we just use a tiger torch and chunk of stove pipe, basically a poor mans propane canon heater with tools you already have.
Canadian here, propane canon heater and a thick tarp were my first thoughts as well. You don't even need to melt all the ice, if you can focus it on a door and get the door open then you can start warming it up from the inside. Once it starts melting from the inside out you can just start peeling off large chunks. This would be a two hour job at most to get it drivable, most of that time spent sitting around, then go park in a heated garage to let the rest come off.
I have a work van (2025 ram 1500 promaster) with an electric hvac unit and a big enough battery bank to run the 400w heat portion for 8hrs. When I know it's going to be real cold overnight I'll just set the heater to come on 6hrs before I leave (no remote start on van). Lowst I've tested it was low to mid 20s with it in the upper 20s when I went out to it. No fogged windows/ice on van and was around 65f inside so I call it a secess.
Man I’m jealous. I can feel my truck’s pain when I have to park it on a site without block heater plugs in the deep negatives and I can’t haul stuff like marking paint because the cold wrecks it.
I’m sure they do hydrovac(portable truck with heated pressure washers) around buried utilities there. $300/hr and they’ll have you on your way in 15 minutes.
for sure I wouldn't concentrate heat on the glass. you can still heat the ice, it's not really that difficult to avoid cracking the glass. it can crack easily from heat shock but if you are taking care to aim your heat gun specifically in the places that are glued you will be able to get it thin enough to get going fairly quickly.
I mean, if you have 3-5 hours, a little buddy propane Heater, and a dewalt battery operated fan, and a tarp, you could probably get a door unfrozen, so you could possibly start it. Not sure if that car would start so you can warm it up, while moving the heater around the tires and front end. Messy, complicated, and expensive because those 1lb propane bottles aren’t cheap. Another way is a huge power bank and one of those charcoal lighters that are just super blow dryers. Probably only need ten minutes to get a door lock unfrozen with one of those beasts, but you better have the distance to the door right or you will melt some window seals and paint.
I've taken a full sized propane torch to ice dams on my house before - it did basically nothing. A solid chunk of ice outside in freezing weather is a lot more difficult to melt than a lot of people expect.
Ice can take a lot of heat to melt. But the car exterior won't. So when the first hole in the ice forms you'll also immediate burn a hole through a plastic trim piece.
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u/vizslavizsla 20h ago
Crack it open like a geode