Greetings. I thought I'd try and get a discussion going about problems - and the solutions to those problems - that your Landy might have in the cold. I have an '05 90 Td5 and I live in the Canadian arctic (but I'm a born and bred Brit so I feel ok about posting here. Plus it gets cold in parts of the UK too).
Cold is relative, of course. It's -6c and snowing here today (April 25) and the overnight temp on Saturday is forecast to be -21c. I first moved up here over 20 years ago and it was noticeably colder then. Now they post weather alerts when the temp drops to -30c, but my first winter here there was an 11 week stretch when the temp never rose above that day or night. Now -38c ambient temp is considered proper cold, but it used to closer to -45c (and, before my time, colder still).
I say 'ambient temp' because the wind chill is a factor too. A -30c day with no wind isn't uncomfortable, but a -10c day with a wind chill of -25c is. And wind chill is felt by vehicles, despite what everyone says. It's easy to measure the effects that it has on your poor, long suffering motor. More about that later, if anyone is interested.
So given that we are driving year round even when there's a wind chill pushing -60c we have to make sure our vehicles are good for, and will start in, those temps. The coolant has to be up to it, and batteries need to be beefy. These are the simple issues - every vehicle here has a block heater and we plug our cars in when it's cold (I use -15c or so as my plug in temp, but everyone has their own comfort zone). A battery blanket is also cheap peace of mind for those cold days and it's simple to have a block heater, a battery blanket and a trickle charger all plugged into one extension cord hidden neatly under the hood (sorry, bonnet!) meaning that when you plug your car in you only have one plug to deal with.
Different vehicles cope differently with the cold. I had a 2010 Civic that would start, albeit unhappily, having been left outside unplugged all night in -40c ambient temp. In general newer vehicles are less adept at handling the cold without assistance, and diesels are of course going to be needing that plug-in sooner than a 'gasser' will. Incidentally, in the case of that Civic, on those coldest mornings the (cloth) seats were stiff as a board, the steering wheel was too cold to touch without gloves (would burn your hands), and the LED display on the stereo read hieroglyphics for the first little while.
But now I have the 90, which creates it's own set of unique problems. There is no such thing as block heater for the Td5, so I had to install a Webasto diesel heater. That's fine (but even it has it's cold temp limits), but the battery has to be strong enough to run it. Not to mention that the doors won't close properly below -15c or so, and the heater in the classic Defender is...well, not designed for arctic winters. I put what we call a 'winter front' on my vehicles (almost everyone does) to help a little. You can buy fancy ones from dealers (or the likes of Exmoor Trim in the case of Landies), but I use a sheet of styrofoam insulation against the grille, a sheet of cardboard in front of that and I cover them both with a piece of waxed canvas. The Td5 will never warm up just driving around town in winter, will only do so once I'm out on the main roads. Which would be fine if I had to go on the main roads to get to work! A 'belly tarp' makes a difference - a piece of that waxed canvas zip-tied underneath the truck under the engine and tranny, but they inevitably get filled with ice and snow and start to fall off, or tear.
The doors are my biggest bug-bear. I learned not to keep slamming them progressively harder my first winter with it because it was so cold that the plastic handle snapped in my hand. It's not much fun driving around in -30c with the door ajar and a cold breeze blowing against your leg, plus it's no good for security because I can't lock the doors. There is one other classic Defender in town and Larry has a Webasto interior heater in that, but then your battery has to be strong enough to power two Webastos, and if you don't have access to a plug in (only one of my parking spots at home is 'powered', and only a limited number of them are at work, so it's first come first served) whaddaya gonna do?
Some people park one vehicle up for the winter, and I pretty much have to do that with the Landy, but that's a shame because (a) I want to drive it, and (b) it is the ideal vehicle for a place where the ground, and the roads, are covered in snow and ice for 7 months of the year.
That's enough griping for now! I'm really just bemoaning that it's late April and still this cold. I have video of it snowing in late May, but that would have been a one day anomaly that year. This year spring is colder and gripping tighter than it has for the past few. Bollocks, I'm going to go and out the kettle on.
Cheers!
Cold is relative, of course. It's -6c and snowing here today (April 25) and the overnight temp on Saturday is forecast to be -21c. I first moved up here over 20 years ago and it was noticeably colder then. Now they post weather alerts when the temp drops to -30c, but my first winter here there was an 11 week stretch when the temp never rose above that day or night. Now -38c ambient temp is considered proper cold, but it used to closer to -45c (and, before my time, colder still).
I say 'ambient temp' because the wind chill is a factor too. A -30c day with no wind isn't uncomfortable, but a -10c day with a wind chill of -25c is. And wind chill is felt by vehicles, despite what everyone says. It's easy to measure the effects that it has on your poor, long suffering motor. More about that later, if anyone is interested.
So given that we are driving year round even when there's a wind chill pushing -60c we have to make sure our vehicles are good for, and will start in, those temps. The coolant has to be up to it, and batteries need to be beefy. These are the simple issues - every vehicle here has a block heater and we plug our cars in when it's cold (I use -15c or so as my plug in temp, but everyone has their own comfort zone). A battery blanket is also cheap peace of mind for those cold days and it's simple to have a block heater, a battery blanket and a trickle charger all plugged into one extension cord hidden neatly under the hood (sorry, bonnet!) meaning that when you plug your car in you only have one plug to deal with.
Different vehicles cope differently with the cold. I had a 2010 Civic that would start, albeit unhappily, having been left outside unplugged all night in -40c ambient temp. In general newer vehicles are less adept at handling the cold without assistance, and diesels are of course going to be needing that plug-in sooner than a 'gasser' will. Incidentally, in the case of that Civic, on those coldest mornings the (cloth) seats were stiff as a board, the steering wheel was too cold to touch without gloves (would burn your hands), and the LED display on the stereo read hieroglyphics for the first little while.
But now I have the 90, which creates it's own set of unique problems. There is no such thing as block heater for the Td5, so I had to install a Webasto diesel heater. That's fine (but even it has it's cold temp limits), but the battery has to be strong enough to run it. Not to mention that the doors won't close properly below -15c or so, and the heater in the classic Defender is...well, not designed for arctic winters. I put what we call a 'winter front' on my vehicles (almost everyone does) to help a little. You can buy fancy ones from dealers (or the likes of Exmoor Trim in the case of Landies), but I use a sheet of styrofoam insulation against the grille, a sheet of cardboard in front of that and I cover them both with a piece of waxed canvas. The Td5 will never warm up just driving around town in winter, will only do so once I'm out on the main roads. Which would be fine if I had to go on the main roads to get to work! A 'belly tarp' makes a difference - a piece of that waxed canvas zip-tied underneath the truck under the engine and tranny, but they inevitably get filled with ice and snow and start to fall off, or tear.
The doors are my biggest bug-bear. I learned not to keep slamming them progressively harder my first winter with it because it was so cold that the plastic handle snapped in my hand. It's not much fun driving around in -30c with the door ajar and a cold breeze blowing against your leg, plus it's no good for security because I can't lock the doors. There is one other classic Defender in town and Larry has a Webasto interior heater in that, but then your battery has to be strong enough to power two Webastos, and if you don't have access to a plug in (only one of my parking spots at home is 'powered', and only a limited number of them are at work, so it's first come first served) whaddaya gonna do?
Some people park one vehicle up for the winter, and I pretty much have to do that with the Landy, but that's a shame because (a) I want to drive it, and (b) it is the ideal vehicle for a place where the ground, and the roads, are covered in snow and ice for 7 months of the year.
That's enough griping for now! I'm really just bemoaning that it's late April and still this cold. I have video of it snowing in late May, but that would have been a one day anomaly that year. This year spring is colder and gripping tighter than it has for the past few. Bollocks, I'm going to go and out the kettle on.
Cheers!
