If you read the previous post, you have a pretty good mental image of what is going on in our shop right now- tires and wiper blades. Well, since that last post, we have had our first real winter storm (not a ton of snow, but enough to wreak some havoc on the roads). We had just a dusting of snow two days ago, and yesterday brought about an inch or two of snow; however, with this small bit of snow came temperatures in the teens and wind gusts in excess of 50 mph. And today, the high temperature is supposed to be only 11 degrees. Right now this morning, it is 2 degrees with the wind chill at -20 degrees. And let me tell you, it is very windy outside, which doesn’t make it feel any warmer.
So now that you have an idea of what it feels like to be outside in Chicago when it is the middle of December, think about ICE and what ice means for your daily routine. This first one is a little off topic, but some of you may have learned this the hard way. You wake up at 5 or 6 in the morning to take a shower before work. You look outside and see a wet, shiny glaze covering the streets and a light grayish smoke coming from the roof of every house. There are no birds flying around, no squirrels running around. Yes, it looks mighty cold outside. You walk into the bathroom to turn on the shower, but no water comes out. Whaaat? Yes, your water pipes are completely frozen from the bitter cold outside. Looks like no shower for you right now! (A good way to prevent your pipes from freezing is to leave your sink faucets on a slow drip overnight. A slow drip will not waste a large amount of water, but it will help to prevent your pipes from freezing.) Fast forward a little to where you walk outside to leave for work. Now, there are a couple of different things that could happen here. First, if you park your car in a garage overnight, you could walk out to find that your garage door is frozen shut. Uh-oh, not good. Or, if you do not park your car in a garage overnight, you could walk up to your car to open the door and your door will be completely frozen shut. Interesting. So how do you get to work if your garage door or your car door are frozen shut? Well, there are de-icers on the market but they won’t do you any good if you don’t have them when you need them. They can’t de-ice anything by sitting on the store shelf!
Now let’s get to the actual car itself. Cars don’t like when the temperatures drop below freezing to a brutally cold point. Just as you don’t like standing in the freezing cold, neither does your car. Gas freezes (it is best to have a full tank of gas when it is brutally cold), hoses break, springs snap, batteries die and engines finally give up on trying to start. That’s where Rennology comes into play. The past couple days (in addition to all of the tires and wiper blades), we have received numerous calls about cars not starting (or cranking) that have to be towed in. And all of these cars that don’t start, well, when they get towed in and dropped off, we have to push them inside. So the past few days, we have all been putting on, taking off, putting on and taking off our jackets, gloves, and hats. Each time one of the technicians are ready to start working on a “no-start” car, we gather up our outerwear, layer up, and make our way outside to push, push, puuuuush the car into the shop bay. It is actually an interesting sight! (I am usually the one to steer because my muscle index would not contribute anything to the pushing of the car!)
Now, we have pretty much started to feel the effects of winter. The blustering cold, the numbing winds, the salt-spreading, the ice on our windshields. Yep, that’s winter. The no-starts, the broken hoses, the dead batteries, the snapped springs, the frozen doors and locks. Yep, that’s winter through Rennology’s eyes!
No comments:
Post a Comment