As you can see by my username and location, where I live it's hot and muggy most of the year round and I've never seen enough snow to make more than a couple of snowballs out of. The eggcream thread got me thinking, since someone posted about how they've had to start mowing their lawn again now that it's spring and it never occurred to me that you didn't have to do that all year 'round in some places. And that reminded me of a question that I've always wanted to ask for years. Do you wash your cars in the winter where it snows? Do you have outdoor drive-in carwashes? Do they freeze and have to be shut down if you do? Or are they somehow insulated?

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Haha, good question. Yes, we do wash our cars. Outdoor drive-in carwashes? Apperently not, since I don't know what you mean. We have buildings kind of like garages in which you pay, the door opens, you drive in, and (depending on which section/car wash you chose) you wash it or it gets washed automatically. But I'm pretty sure you have those to... is that what you meant? Anyway, yeah, in the winter the water freezes if it's not dried quickly enough. It's a pain when it gets about -30 F.

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"Speak the truth, and speak it ever,
cost it what it will
for he who hides the wrong he did
did the wrong thing still."
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LOL Texas, I'm from San Antonio and know how you feel!

Although I lived up north (Iowa) for almost 2 years. The craziest thing was that Dairy Queen was SEASONAL instead of year round! And seeing "Snow Detour Routes" was weird too. Also your car door freezing shut over night in a layer of ice was weird..

Not having 100F was nice though

Hi texasguitarslinger: my part of the world it seldom gets cold enough to freeze the car wash machines.

However, we also have enterprising young people who set up businesses hand valetting cars in places such as supermarket carparks while you are in the store shopping. Sometimes cheaper than the machine and probably a better job. We have a guy we regularly use and often bring him out a coffee when we come back to the carpark, so hopefully that stops him from freezing in winter...

Cheers - C

Hi Tex,

Interesting question Living in Scotland, I've seen snow once or twice I usually find after a snowfall, simply go out and wipe the snow off my car, and hey presto! clean car, for free! Mother nature, in her infinate wisdom, has thought of everything

It's like mac67 said. but it actually more important to regularly wash your car in the winter. A lot of places use various salts on icy roads, you can't let the slush that forms sit on your car, it destroys the finish, and causes a lot of rust problems.

I would take mowing the lawn over shoveling the sidewalk any day. Although most of the snow is off the ground here, yesterday was the first day in a week and a half that I didn't see any snow falling

can't wait for summer.

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

I live in Iowa and we have drive in car washes. They just shut the doors during the cold months so you've gotta open them up. I'm guessing a little exercise never hurt anyone.

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I tried to think of something clever to put here but- OH! Something shiny!!!

We had a big freeze here in Vegas about 18-19 years ago that caught everyone off guard. I had washed my car the night before and when I went out to go to work in the morning both doors were frozen shut. I had to ask my neighbor for a ride to work but he couldn't drive his car because he didn't have antifreeze in the radiator and his expansion plugs were actually laying on the ground under the car.

As was stated above, you gotta wash the car in the winter. I take mine at least nce a week in the winter, very seldom in the summer.

When you say "drive in car wash", are you referring to the ones where you park your car and wash it yourself with a power washer or the ones where your drive your car through a machine? In Chicago, we have very few if the former. As far as the automated machines are concerned, it seems that the ones at the gas stations tend to be closed more often in the winter. The high end wash places never seem to close though.

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We have both of these.

As for Skyways, I spent a few years in Minneapolis and loved the skyways in the winter. Man was it cold up there!

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I tried to think of something clever to put here but- OH! Something shiny!!!

I grew up on the east coast and spent my first 36 years there; I've been in SoCal for the next 21, so I've experienced both. In the east, I never bothered to wash my cars (at all) before I got my first almost new one.

Then, yep, I washed it fairly regularly in winter to get the salt and other road crud off. As others have said, they have garage like car washes there where you drive in and the process includes blasts of hot air to dry at the end. That process wasn't perfect but at least you got most of the corrosive salt off your car.

One thing you had to watch out for was water getting in the door locks. If that happened, you couldn't open the door. I sprayed some graphite into the locks once in while in winter -- as with delicate camera parts, that helps mechanisms that are supposed to move in cold weather.

Out here, we have mostly outdoor car washes where they run it through a building, but then workers dry and polish your car out in the parking lot. That's the thing that amazes anyone who visits me -- employees out there drying, waxing and buffing your car. In the east, that was done by the machinery in the car wash building and that was about it.

They may not do quite as good a job as you would, but it's pretty decent once you find a good car wash. Nothing like that at all in upstate New York that I recall, and in any event, you certainly wouldn't have people outside wiping down and waxing cars in the middle of the winter.

We have those, as well as the car washes where you get out and do it yourself, and the ones where you drive through the machine. The latter of which is what I mean by outdoor drive in car washes.



I've never even heard of something like that. The doors never close on ours.

That's pretty amazing about the salt and stuff, I would never have thought that would be such a big problem. We had a freak freeze last year and the roads froze everywhere because the city of Houston owns about two or three of those salt trucks. We had literally over 500 car wrecks on that day alone in the Houston area. We obviously have no idea how to drive on ice.

Downtown Houston doesn't very many Skyways, but there are tunnels connecting the buildings so we don't have to walk in the heat. The tunnels flooded during Tropical Storm Allison and since then they've installed huge submarine doors that close when there's a flood threat.

And a seasonal Dairy Queen? Man, I've seen people stand in line for ice cream in January.

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Hey David. I'm in San Antonio as well. If you ever want to get together to jam, you can get in touch with me through Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1497077198&ref=profile

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I really like all them "Aster" guitars. You know, like the Stratoc, Telec and Jazzm.