Is cold weather detrimental to body fiberglass?

I am the third owner of a 2006 Vintage speedster. The fiberglass body and paint (silver) are in excellent condition. I enjoy driving in New Jersey winter- sometimes below freezing. Can this be detrimental to the body? Thanks in advance for your advice.
(I wear my heated motorcycle gloves and vest and stay comfortable.)

Joel

Ask Cory.

I doubt if the weather will be as detrimental on the fiberglass as it may well be to the VW pan below it. You are speaking of snow, ice and SALT, right?

The only time I saw fiberglass damaged by "cold", a kid turned a Co2 fire extinguisher on a Vette and held it there.... His dad almost killed him....

You won't damage anything.

If fiberglass were effected by moderate cold the roads would be clogged with shattered semi rig noses and air deflectors, small planes would be falling out of the sky, fishing boats filling the North Sea, every single Corvette would be back at the dealer's for warranty work and GM would be in financial trouble like you wouldn't believe ! !




Go on, step right in . . . I left a nice big hole there right at the very end.

Affected, TC. Not 'effected.' And GM can go jump into Lake Erie. ;)

I'm the wrong guy to ask about cold affecting the fiberglass on a Speedster, really. I don't particularly care about the bodywork on my car.

Where's Mr. Stroud, eh? He'll know for sure! Or our esteemed colleague Brian Puskas, formerly of Yellowknife?

Cold?

Fiberglass?

Really??

I think TC nailed it, but just to reinforce his point, there are, right now, a LOT of snowmobiles running all over the top of the Northern Hemisphere in temps as low as -60F and none of them seem to be bothered by the cold. OK, so they might get a tad more brittle, but so would you or me in that cold.

I would be far more worried about starting a VW aircooled engine with too-thick oil at anything below +20F.

I'm just sayin.......

I own a fiberglass pool comany up here in the Great White North and I have almost 50 pools 85% full of water with the top 1-2 feet of solid ice right now so I would say our cars are fine

Could be effect, as the cold failed to effect the changes in the make up of the fiberglass that were expected . . .




Maybe?

Heh, heh ...

Sorry for the grammatical sidebar, Joel. It seems like your question got answered pretty well.

When you affect a situation, you have an effect on it.

If the cold affects the fiberglass it has an effect on it.

thanks guys for all the information.
Rich- even though my floorpan is undercoated I don't plan on driving on ice,snow or salt. Actually the roads have been good because of the mild winter.

Go Giants!
Joel

It was freezing here today. Must have been in the mid 50's. Car seems fine.

Colin - that must have been the wind chill factor! 8-)

Just woke up and took an ice cold shower.

Shower stall appears to have survived the low temp just fine . . .

TC, is this an everyday event for you or just a test for this post?

Jim - You know it was. You're down in Newport Beach? Whoa. You've gotta deal with that brutal coastal breeze. Lemme know if you need supplies or survival gear. We're in this together.

But stack something heavy on the hood in hot summer weather and you'll have issues!

Greg,
Does the hot weather caution also apply to luggage rack weight on the grill pressing down on the hood support points in hot temperatures?

Send Carl a cigar for that question.

Carl - WRT to your luggage rack question I can speak only of my personal experience with our '95 VS. Our VS is a daily driver on which we have logged nearly 130,000Km (just over 80,000 miles). Over the years we have traveled through all terrain and weather with our set-up without adverse affect. In our vintage luggage I carry spare parts, cleaning/polishing material, foul-weather gear, odds & end.

I would kinda think that, if fiberglass was THAT susceptible to weight and temperature, we'd see a lot more hot tub mishaps. Bottoms softening from the hot water, sagging centers, leaks, deformation, doom . . . danger and death in the nightly news.

Then there would be the horrible catastrophes at desert hotel and resort pools.

As always around here, over thinking and overly cautious, but now that I know how old you all are, I'm not surprised.

BWAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAA...