In my motorcycle riding days I had an electric suit with electric gloves. Put that baby on and plug yourself into the car. You could drive at just about any temperature.
Carbon fiber seat heaters are good. Also a MODERN Webasto or Eberspacher heater are really nice to have, especially if you have windshield defogging.
I never did cold weather motorcycling, so no knowledge of electric jackets/gloves and such. I always rode my bike on NICE days.
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My only transportation to school and back for a few eastern winters was a mighty Honda 125 — 13 hp @ 10,000 rpm, top speed 65 mph, 153 mpg. (The brochure refers to a 'startling' 13 hp, but I had other adjectives for it.)
This was before electrified garments. Now, it seems like it was almost before woven garments of any kind. I had a cotton corduroy jacket that kept me warm for the first two miles or so, and some rudimentary gloves that did not. I can remember not feeling my hands at all by the time I made it to school, or for about an hour thereafter. Which wasn't the worst of it. That was how they felt when sensation finally began to return.
This experience taught me something about the severity of eastern winters and traveling through them in/on open vehicles. It also taught me the significance of a 'wind chill' factor. And it probably factored into my eventual decision to leave the east coast and seek more mild climates, without ever looking back.
Older and presumably wiser now, I don't mess around with cold weather in open vehicles. You want to play mountain man conquers winter? Great, knock yourself out. Personally, I think prolonged exposure to extreme cold reduces the number of functioning brain cells. I can't think of any other explanation for some of the bizarre and masochistic practices I read about here when winter approaches. These are supposed to be 'fun' cars. Well, I'm sticking with a strict interpretation of that term.
My policy is '40 and out' — degrees Fahrenheit, that is.
Preserve as many of those precious brain cells as you can. You're going to need them when you eventually reach an age where you spend five minutes staring at your phone because you can't remember you pulled it out of your pocket to check what the weather will be like today.
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I gotta agree with ya, Mitch. I do NOT enjoy freezing while driving. Unlike the majority of the folks here I didn't mind driving my Speedster with the top up and side windows on, particularly after I replaced the side curtains with vented lexan windows. It was actually kind of nice in there.
We're currently in what's called the "Shoulder Season" here in New England, that period between Summer and the grays and cold of Winter and especially so in this year of MUCH warmer daytime temps. It's been a bit of a roller coaster with night-time temps in the 30's but warming up during the day into the 70's. This is when you can go to Cape Cod or other popular areas without the hordes of tourists, but restaurants, beaches and attractions are still open. And with ocean temps still kissing 60F and higher, especially along the tidal flats of the north side of the Cape, the hardier among us can still go for a swim on the warmer days.
I've finally gotten everything buttoned up on Pearl, she's running great and I have been driving her just about every day. Finally got the top up and used the heater a few days ago when I went for a haircut, because it dipped down into the 40's that day. The colorful leaves are long gone, replaced by the browns of the trees and the large "snowflakes" from the old Red Oak trees still stubbornly holding on to their leaves.
I don't know how long this glorious weather of "Indian Summer" will last, but I'm enjoying it as long as I can, exploring a different compass direction each day. Yesterday was a quick trip into southern New Hampshire..... Today looks like a swing through parts of Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts, brushing by Thompson Speedway en-route. I love this time of year.
The one thing I wished I had specified in my build is a fan driven heater. That six cylinder engine doesn't really throw out much heat when it's cold.
The heater boxes are in good shape.
A young man does not know what he will become. He's brimming with confidence, and has dreams, sure -- and he has a plan, because after all, failing to plan is planning to fail. But he's not truly formed, at least not until he becomes responsible for other people.
I married young -- found the ridiculously gorgeous gem from two towns over before somebody else could stake their claim. What she saw in me, I don't really know -- I was outrageously idealistic and comically underemployed.
I was going to get out of my no-stoplight hick-town, live in the jungle, and save the world, though -- and I told her so. Marrying Jeanie was the final piece of the puzzle, and we were on a plane for Papua New Guinea before our second wedding anniversary.
I did that (living in the jungle, saving the world) for 3 years and brought Jeanie along for the ride. We lived in a grass hut with a wood floor and a steel roof. We caught rain water, cooked on a wood stove, and kept our food in a kerosene refrigerator. Jeanie had a baby in a remote clinic with no Dr. attending. Our marriage almost didn't make it, and should not have made it. Any reasonable bookmaker would have put our chances at about 20:1, but I was betting all I had on beating those odds.
We came home just shy of my 26th birthday, with 2 small kids and one on the way -- and my tail between my legs. I was back to my hometown, back to winter, back to being a normie. I had no assets, zero money, and a job working on commercial HVAC as a 2nd year apprentice. I made $10/hr and mowed lawns in the evening to keep lights on and food on the table. We were making it, but that first winter, I had not yet saved the money to buy a decent winter coat.
The night of my 4th wedding anniversary (on Dec. 21, 1989), I was "on call". It was an early winter, and had snowed about 6" after an inch of freezing rain. There was a very popular yuppie burger bar in Peoria named "Cheddars". The place had a sloped cedar roof, topped with a flat section surrounded by a parapet shielding all of the HVAC equipment. The shingled portion was on about a 9/12 slope for about 15 feet, and access to the flat part was by means of a rope. A guy was meant to put up a ladder on the side of the building, grab the knotted rope, walk the slope with the rope until getting to the flat part through a break in the parapet.
The restaurant was about 50 deg inside and it was a Friday night. I was supposed to be meeting my wife for a very rare night out (we had a gift certificate to "Mr. Steak", if memory serves), but nobody refuses overtime calls in my business if they want to have a job on Monday. I needed this job like I needed oxygen, so I put up my ladder and felt in the snow for the rope. It was buried in the ice, but I got under it with a screwdriver and pulled it free. I tried to walk the slope, but it was way too slick and I ended up hanging from the rope at the edge of the roof, then dropping down to try again.
I summited Mt. Cheddars by laying on my belly, pulling myself like a toboggan -- hand over hand through the snow on the sloped roof with my tool bag on my back. By the time I actually made it to the flat part of the roof, I had snow down my shirt, down my pants, and in my socks. The O/A temp was in the single digits. I couldn't feel my hands, my stones had retreated to somewhere in the vicinity of my small intestines, my toes felt like they were on fire, and I had no idea how I was going to get off the roof now that I was on it.
I also had no idea what was going on with the cold restaurant, since the units were all running on high-fire.
That was probably the low-point for me and winter in the Midwest -- standing on that roof, wind blowing about 30 mph, 5 deg, soaking wet, shivering in a fall-weight jacket stuffed with melting snow with no idea what I was doing or how things would ever get better. I was alone on my anniversary, our marriage in a very precarious state, two kids and one on the way looking to me as the sole means of support, and cold in a way that's hard to describe if you've never been there. If California or Florida or Arizona had been an option at all, I'd have gotten in my car and pointed it to Sacramento or wherever.
It wasn't (an option).
So I warmed my hands in the exhaust of one of the units and fumbled around until I found the problem and fixed it (the outdoor air dampers were driving open on all the units, sucking in 5 deg air and pumping it into the restaurant). I got off the roof the same way I got up (sliding on my belly), got in my white van and drove to Mr. Steak where Jeanie was waiting for me. My mom and dad had bought me a winter coat for Christmas, and they had given it to her so I could have it that night.
It wasn't a steady upward trajectory from that point -- but we figured out how to be married, I learned how to do the only thing available for me to do that would pay anything at all, and we learned how to cope with winter in flyover country. Things got better.
I put the fun car away every winter, do some work on it, and wait for Spring.
Maybe it's just a rationalization, but there's a part of me that thinks I appreciate summer in a way that people who've never really been cold cannot. Winter teaches perseverance (or stubbornness, or some approximation of both). I'd like to think it's helped make me who I am, but I don't know.
I just know that Spring always comes -- no matter how cold or dark the winter.
@Bob: IM S6 posted:The one thing I wished I had specified in my build is a fan driven heater. That six cylinder engine doesn't really throw out much heat when it's cold.
The heater boxes are in good shape.
I am sure something can be worked out Bob to assist in heating the cabin.
@Sacto Mitch, back in the '70s my then wife had that 125 Honda and I had a 350. We got them from a Honda shop in Duluth that had a fire. We drove there from SE Michigan, thru the upper penninsula and brought back 3 bikes. We had to clean them up and recover the seats.
In the winter I wore a military surplus leather flight suit when we took them on the frozen lake.
@IaM-Ray posted:I am sure something can be worked out Bob to assist in heating the cabin.
I've thought about it a lot and conferred with a few minds that are much more mechanical than mine. It's not an easy fix once the car is built, and once the under dash is set up for the air-blown heat.
But, I'll get it done someday.
Well you must have some sort of blower ….like this under the hood I would think. @Bob: IM S6 no?
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No. Nothing like that. It's just an engine driven heating system. Same as the old Beetles and Karmann Ghias.
So you could have something of that style added I would think to force more air to the cabin and also to the windshield and maybe with a heat electric coil 12v operated.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Demon...ing-Fan/311866168667
Specification: GBP 120.00
- Airflow: 87cfm (147m3/h
- Hose Size: 2.5" (63.5mm)
- Length: 6.3/8" (161.5mm)
- Weight: 370 grams
- Voltage: 12v
- Current Draw: 1.35amps
- Max Air Temp: 65° C or near 150 Fahr
Kit Contents:
- 1x Powerful Fan
- 2x Aluminium Fabricated Ducts
- 1x Side Mounting Bracket
- 4x Stainless Steel Cap Head Bolts
- 8x Stainless Steel Washers
- 4x Stainless Steel Nyloc Nuts
Requires 2x M5 bolts
10.10.2024, 07:05:28
