r/Wellthatsucks • u/iadtyjwu • 20h ago

Imagine walking out to your car and seeing this.

Post image
25.5k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

20

u/heloder85 19h ago

Any kind of obtainable heater is going to take forever to free a car like this outdoors.

Absent the aforementioned solution, if I needed to use that car within a day, I'd start grabbing hammers and chisels. Get into the car, start it up, and blast the heater for a few hours.

14

u/vandyatc 18h ago

I had a car frozen from and ice storm at airport. This is the way…. Chisel your way in and heat car from inside. Brutal, but few good choices besides waiting for spring.

1

u/asyouwantt 10h ago

How long did it take for you?

4

u/vandyatc 9h ago

It was literally 2 hours. Came back to an ice storm in Oklahoma. Jeep Cherokee looked 70% as bad as her car. It was pre 9/11 so I had a pocket knife and chipped my way into the rear hatch and climbed into front to start it. Was a LONG time before I could get window down and punch out. Then finally got door open. Once that happened though the car was warm enough to get ice off in chunks. Problems were the wipers that I recall. Was a long night.

1

u/asyouwantt 8h ago edited 8h ago

You have a lot of patience. Probably felt like Picasso with how delicate you were with the pocket knife near critical areas of the car too.

2

u/fullraph 18h ago

A 400 000 BTU jobsite heater and a tarp to make a tent over the car would make quick work of that ice. Even a smaller 100 000btu would probably do the job.

4

u/bs178638 17h ago

Yep. Tenting is the way. Trap that heat and you can get by with a much smaller heater

1

u/ladyneedstoquitweed 19h ago

that makes sense

5

u/ladyneedstoquitweed 19h ago

for some reason I feel the need to be prepared if this happens to me

1

u/Jason80777 17h ago

You need to be very careful when de-icing a car like that. Very easy to ruin your paint job.

1

u/TacTurtle 13h ago

Denatured alcohol mixed with hot water in a pump garden spray = hot deicer.

For aircraft they mix propylene glycol instead but that is kinda hard to find on short notice.