The great American author Elmore Leonard said “Never open a book with the weather.” Unfortunately, too many stories of broken-down vehicles start with the owner explaining how it was the hottest or coldest day of the year.
Extreme temperatures can lead to sudden failures or sometimes damage done over long periods of time. Either way, it’s expensive to fix. Other than avoiding high and low temperatures, preparing a car for them with proper maintenance or even carefully considered modifications is key.
Plan for the worst, so you can expect the best; that’s the desired outcome.
Common Sense To Lower Body Temps
Some of the easiest and least expensive ways to protect your car from the environment are common sense. But, if common sense worked as advertised, this world would have half as many tow truck drivers.
Find Some Cover
Starting at home… All those 38-gallon totes full of holiday décor have to live somewhere, but finding them a new home in order to park your car in a garage is the first and most effective step. Cars are expensive investments; storing yours inside the garage wards off damage from the summer sun and freezing from the winter cold.
Away from home, do everything you can to park in the shade – the one caveat being, don’t park under anything that drips. Trees have sap and birds; pipes in parking garages have hard water; and balconies of college bars have beer. Avoid them all.
Throw Some Shade
If you do have to park outside, get a sunshade for the windshield. The cardboard freebie you got at the gym isn’t going to be nearly as effective as the high-tech custom-made metallicized $100 specialty unit from the dealership. Better yet, look for one with a black side, as that can be faced outside in the winter to help keep the interior warmer.
Sun shades not only help control the temperature of a car’s interior, they also keep out UV rays, which are one of the worst things a car is exposed to.
Just about every material in a car is susceptible to damage from UV light. Both UVA and UVB wavelengths will break chemical bonds in everything from a cars paint to its tires, to interior components through a process called photodegradation. This causes colors to fade, materials to get brittle and basically wear prematurely.
Keep It Clean
Speaking of UV rays, keeping a car clean will help lessen the sun’s effects on its finish.
No, dirt is not nature’s car cover. And in fact, there’s a lot more than dirt sitting on a car’s paint. Brake dust doesn’t just stick to your wheels; dripping oil and coolant gets atomized and airborne; industrial fallout -- all of it is on your paint.
These things are broken down by UV light into free radicals, which then attack the car’s finish. Keeping a car clean will help minimize contaminant damage, while keeping the car waxed will help separate contaminants from the finish and block some amount of UV light.
Turtle Wax Ceramic Polish Wax
The best protection currently available is a ceramic coating. It’s about the hardest, most durable substance you can put over a car’s finish. Professionally applied coatings are expensive, but often include a guarantee against UV damage.
Similar rules apply to your car’s interior. While some factory glass is now treated to block both UVB and UVA light, most can only handle the former. Thankfully, window tint film usually stops all forms of UV light and helps keep a car cooler in the summer. When shopping for window tint, don’t just look at UV and IR (infrared) blocking ratings. Look for Total Solar Energy Rejection percentage to judge effectiveness.
Have A Plan
Finally, and this is probably the most common-sense advice, minimize a cars exposure to extreme temperatures and the elements by planning ahead.
In the summer, try to keep driving restricted to early morning or later in the evening when temperatures and light exposure are minimized. In winter, try to drive during the warmest parts of the day. In any season, minimize trips by combining multiple errands in one trip.
Also, plan routes that avoid backtracking or routes that will require sitting in traffic. Many navigation apps will help with trip planning both before you leave and while driving.
Keeping Your Cool Sometimes Requires A Few Tools
Extreme temperatures affect more than just the parts of a car you can see.
The mechanical systems of a car have internal temperature ranges in which they should operate. Many of these use heat management systems to keep them in the correct operating range – and all of them (even those cooled by ambient air) require some level of maintenance to make sure they are working, no matter the weather.
Coolants
An engine’s cooling system, using dedicated liquid coolant and a radiator is probably the most obvious one of these systems.
Coolant circulates through dedicated channels in the engine block, head, and in some cases a turbocharger or two, where it absorbs heat and then runs through a radiator, which passes that heat to the outside air.
That means, if your car is low on coolant (or has contaminated coolant) it can overheat. Similarly, if the coolant pump is not functioning as designed, the system won’t flow enough volume and the car will also overheat. The same with a blocked radiator.
Maintaining the system is the easiest way to avoid far costlier problems.
Lubricants
Other mechanical systems, like the transmission or even the power steering, can use lubricant or hydraulic fluid along with another radiator to aid in cooling.
A car’s transmission rarely has dedicated coolant, but uses transmission fluid as both a lubricant and coolant. Automatic transmissions also use it as hydraulic fluid to shift gears. Contaminated or broken-down fluid won’t perform any of these tasks as well as it should.
Changing transmission fluid at scheduled intervals is key for not only the best performance, but also transmission longevity. Check the car’s owner’s manual for different service intervals for extreme duty, which could be considered temperature extremes, towing, or even frequent off-road use.
The same is true for engine oil. While most manufacturers have extended the service intervals for oil changes, it’s good to check the manual for special cases with shorter intervals.
The owner’s manual should also list if vehicles require different oil viscosity in different operating environments. It’s not unusual to see a specification for higher viscosity in hotter climates or lower viscosity for colder climates.
For owners wanting extra protection, manufacturers sometimes offer special equipment packages in different markets. For example, cars sold in the Middle East may have heavy duty cooling systems not offered in places like North America. A little time spent Googling will normally turn up the part numbers needed to source those components from a local dealer. The parts are all OE, so they should bolt on with no issues and the car will function like it came that way from the factory, just better at handling summer heat.
Airflow
Other parts of the car, brakes for instance, use air cooling to stay at the proper temperature.
You may not think you have much control over components cooled by ambient air, but there are methods that aren’t so obvious. For example, performance cars often have openings in the front bumper which duct air directly to the brake rotors. Even vehicles without openings in the bumper can use air-deflecting devices underneath the car to push air onto the rotors.
Brake ducting and air diverters are often restricted to the highest performance trim levels of the vehicle, but can often be added after the fact to lower trim levels.
Similarly, increasing airflow to radiators for the cooling system or intercoolers on turbocharged cars will increase their effectiveness. Some cars have blocked-off grilles, as manufacturers have to balance pulling air inside the car for better cooling and the negative effect it has on aerodynamics.
The converse is true in cold climates. While something like an intercooler can never really be too cold, most brake pads have a minimum effective temperature, so limiting air flow might be beneficial for increasing initial bite, especially on cars equipped with performance-focused pads.
A Couple Hacks To Keep Performance On Track
“High-performance use” is a catch-all term for any use of a vehicle pushed beyond what the average person would do with it. It can be a driver turning laps at a race track, climbing over boulders on a rock-crawling trail, blasting down dirt roads, or even towing and hauling.
No matter how a vehicle is pushed to its limits, there’s a good chance that thermal management is going to be a concern. For most high-performance activities, high temperatures will be the biggest concern.
Track Driving
For track driving, the first steps at handling heat will usually involve brake upgrades. Higher temperature range brake pads and fluid will usually be enough to handle the extra heat.
Most new cars are turbocharged and their intercoolers are generally adequate, even for fast road driving. However, track use requires longer and repeated periods of high-boost and will quickly heat-soak a factory intercooler. Upgrading to a larger and more efficient aftermarket intercooler is almost always a safe bet.
Some cars will also require upgrades to engine cooling. If airflow is already maximized, an aftermarket upgrade may be required.
Cooling the car’s driver on hot days is often overlooked, but the easiest and quickest solution is often a cooling vest. These range from vests which are literally wearable ice packs to small systems using a water cooler and pump. Lastly, stay hydrated.
Rock Crawling
Rock-crawling might not be a sport where most people would expect to find vehicles overheating, but given the high torque demands and little airflow, it begins to make more sense.
Larger radiators can help, but again, with little to no airflow, they may not be effective. Getting that airflow requires electric fans, normally mounted directly on the radiators. These might be required for everything from the engine cooling system, to transmission, and even power steering.
Sometimes, off-roading requires a combination of rock-crawling and track driving. Speeds can vary between barely moving to triple digits, so airflow is equally as variable. Desert driving can see temperatures upwards of 125 degrees, so even with high airflow, it’s hard to call it “cooling.”
As you might imagine, off-roading is dirty, so upgraded radiators tend to have more widely spaced fins to avoid getting clogged with debris, but this makes them less efficient. Expertise and experience are required to maximize upgrades, but the whole process is going to start with identifying the type of off-roading you expect to do and the speeds associated with it.
Towing & Hauling
Racers know tow vehicles are often put through more punishment than the cars they’re pulling. Towing ability is all about cooling capacity. Putting out 900 lb-ft of torque during a dyno pull is one thing, putting out 600 lb-ft of torque for 45 minutes straight climbing over a mountain is something entirely different.
For many truck owners, the knee-jerk reaction is to install a larger radiator. However, starting with maximizing what the truck came with is probably a better first step.
Different coolants have different heat capacities and different heat ranges. Depending on if freezing is a concern, changing to a coolant with higher specific-heat capacity will make the system more efficient, but it may also freeze at higher temperatures than the factory coolant.
Swapping out a thermostat for a lower temperature unit and changing the operating speeds of the radiator fans, are both cheaper options than a new radiator.
If those steps are still inadequate, then a new radiator might be the only choice.
Also, engine coolant temperatures are rarely the only concern when towing. Factory transmission cooling is usually handled by a smaller cooler integrated into the engine cooling system; a separate radiator will add loads more heat capacity. Also, aftermarket transmission fluid pans often provide more capacity making cooling easier and lessening fluid breakdown.
Whether an owner is trying to increase a vehicle’s life or extract the most performance from it, making sure a car is optimized for the environment it’s operating in is crucial. The first step is being a responsible owner. Keep car maintenance up to date, keep it protected from extreme temperatures, and avoid UV exposure when possible. If the vehicle will be operated outside conditions the manufacturer intended, the aftermarket can help with carefully planned-out upgrades.