February 2016
So car in winter mode & everything OK...err NO!
Had a friends Mk6 in my garage with the dreaded leaky rear door via the window carrier foam seal. As it had soaked the rear footwell carpets, my car was on the driveway & the Mk6 was in my garage drying out!
Unfortunately I messed up my car!!
Now I pride myself on keeping the car clean & know about the freezing of the door seals etc & had applied rubber seal/protector to all the seals when I swapped onto the winter tyres back in November. I decided that it would be a good idea to rinse the car on a sunny afternoon to get most of the salt/grit/grime off, but did not dry the car as not a "proper clean".
The next morning I was up at 5:45AM to go ski- mountaineering & the temperature had dropped to -6C outside my house. Guess what? The car was frozen solid, door handles & doors. I just managed to get the drivers door open & put the heating on, heated windscreens, mirrors, etc., etc. This is something I don't usually have to do as I have the garage, but I hate doing it with the car sat idling, as it's not ideal for the engine!
Basically the excess water in the door shuts had frozen the gaps between the door/rubbers & the car body solid, & affected the external door handles. So if washing the car, dry the excess water off! The paintwork was OK due to the ceramic coating & rubbers seals were all OK & had not ripped the velvet bits off either so the rubber protector had worked as I had to force the drivers & passenger doors open.
Then on the drive the whole of the washer system for the front & rear windscreens, & headlights failed!!
. I had to stop & have a look & one of the headlight washer units was stuck out & would not retract & the other one was not flush. Anyway the car had the sun on it all day (thawing it out) whilst I went ski-mountaineering, & when I came back to the car both of the headlight washers had fully retracted flush automatically!!
Then on the drive back home I got a very nice stone chip in the black lower part of the windscreen just above the rest position of the passenger side wiper blade!
Nice deep crater with an air bubble fracture ...Aaarrrrgggghhhhh!!! So that's the three bad things which had to happen as the ski-mountaineering was a superb day!!
On a free day I jacked the car up, removed the skid tray & had a look at the washer reservoir which is a huge 5lt version as I have the headlight washer system for the Xenon's. This reservoir is in the cavity between the wheel arch & the front bumper & front fog light (all UK passenger side). At it's lowest it extends down to just above the cold air duct for the wheel arch in under bumper valance. There is no insulation/protection around the reservoir, or the two pumps which are mounted at the bottom. Also the hoses for the headlight washer system appear to be well protected, but the two for the front & rear screens are much thinner in diameter & less protected. So VAG are basically relying on you using strong enough screen wash!
I usually use screen wash down to -40C & dilute it to cope with -20C, but a couple of years ago I had no option but to get -20C, which ended up being diluted to cope with -10C. Now in my old Skoda this was OK even when the car was left outside because the reservoir was higher up in the engine bay & had more protection/insulation around it.
Anyway I thoroughly inspected for damage, leaks etc, & function checked the car & all OK thank god!! Lessons learnt, much stronger screen wash found & purchased. I also drained the existed weak stuff out by "using" the washers, which took ages!!!
Got Autoglass to come out & fix the stone chip, the bloke doing it had worked for them for 20yrs so knew his stuff. Because it was in the lower black area he could not put the mirror behind it to see what was happening, so had to do it "blind". Anyway filled, solid, & only a small air bubble fracture line just visible, so very good job!!!
Still love the car, so took a couple of good pics when out on another day skiing.
