Dashing out into the chilly winter cold to start your car is unpleasant enough, but it’s even worse when you get there and find that your car door is frozen. A car door is made up of several components, including the door frame, rubber weather stripping and body panels. Melting ice, snow and moisture can seep into these areas and refreeze, preventing the door from opening. There are plenty of wrong ways to open a frozen car door, as shown below:
- • Yanking on the handle over and over puts a lot of stress on a door’s seals, joints and other components, which can be expensive to fix.
- • Using hot water is an absolute no-no. Glass, metal and rubber don’t handle rapid heat well, and the sudden change in temperature can accelerate wear, not to mention the fact that hot water just refreezes, making the problem worse.
- • Never, ever try to pry a frozen door open with tools like a screwdriver, crowbar, tire iron, etc. Those can easily damage the door frame and cause your door to not close properly.
- • Putting your weight behind it and body-slamming a frozen door could leave you and the car worse for wear, jostling mechanisms within the door and causing misalignment.
- • Using an open flame not only damages the paint and plastic trim, but it puts you at risk of burning yourself.
- • Finally, forcing the key by twisting it into a frozen block can do more harm that good. Aside from the fact that you could snap the key in half, you can also break the very delicate lock cylinders inside.
So what’s the right way to open a frozen car door? The quickest and easiest way to is by using a commercial deicer containing alcohol. These sprays work because alcohol lowers the freezing point of water, even if the water has already frozen to ice. Spraying the deicer along the door frame, weather stripping and handle should unfreeze the door and allow it to open. You can also spray the deicer directly into the lock. What if you have no deicer? Just combine two parts rubbing alcohol with one part water to make your own deicer. Put the mixture in a spray bottle and you’re ready to go.
