OK, maybe it's a bit early, but I'm starting to prepare my J for the winter. Last year I was a delivery driver during the winter and got bogged down by several snowstorms. Although I have an office job now and don't drive as much, I plan to do a few things to make driving through snowstorms easier in the months to come.

1. Heated seat covers (already done). Bought a pair of black and grey seat covers from Advance auto, a pack of magnet wire from RadioShack and stitched the wire through the back of the seat cover for about a 1.9 Ohm resistance good for about 70-80 watts. It heats up fast and gets hot enough to dry my clothes if I've been walking through the rain or snow.

2. Heated wipers. I haven't done this yet, but either I will do DIY or buy these: http://www.sigmaauto.com/HotShot/everblades.php I found myself constantly beating the crap out of my wipers to get the ice off and more ice would form on them as I drove making the squeegee part ineffective.

3. Heated mirrors. This would solve another huge PITA. During a good part of the year, every day and night the temperature cycles just above freezing to below freezing, constantly dripping water over the mirrors and refreezing it. Also snow would land on the mirrors and just stay there. Because a lot of us have manual mirrors, every time we pull over to scrape the ice off them, they're pushed out of alignment and we have to reposition them and that means getting out of the car for the passenger's side. I haven't done this yet, but I'm planning on a DIY job involving a resistor mounted to an aluminum heat spreader.

4. Heated windshield washer fluid. Right now, I've got 10' of copper tubing wrapped around the upper radiator pipe connected to the washer line. Also there's a check valve there to keep the fluid in the coil and prevent it from falling back into the tank. The fluid warms up pretty fast, but the capacity is fairly low. The fluid isn't hot enough to crack the windshield, but it could melt that stubborn stuck-on ice pretty easily which means no more scraping ice in the mornings. The biggest drawback here is that the engine has to hit 195 before any hot fluid is available. I'm going to change this to a small tank that draws heat off the valve cover, because even a slightly warm engine can supply 80 degree fluid which would melt ice pretty easily.

I think it would be really great to have these options on our winter cars, especially when most people can't get them on cars that cost less than $30K.

2002 Cavalier 2200 5spd

haha mine will be going under a car tarp every winter.Since it is painted and i just dont feel like driving a nice car in winter time.Thats what the beater is for




Vote for my car for car of the month on www.v6z24.com..

Hope all those mods work out for you! Sounds like some great ideas. But... I still don't know what this "winter" is, I haven't even seen real snow!

From a Florida J


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Words that you can't use in modding: Finished, Perfect, Cheap.

I'm super glad I don't have to 'winterfy' my car this year....26 years of snowbelt snow up in ohio.....don't think i'll be missing that too much

Bring on the snow....wait I still need to wax the HHR.



PRND321 Till I DIE
Old Motor: 160whp & 152ft/lbs, 1/4 Mile 15.4 @88.2
M45 + LD9 + 4T40-E, GO GO GO

My winter prep so far has been.... switching my blades to some reflex waipers... got my winter tires ready to go... I don't see the need for heated mirrors/blades/windshield washer fluid..... seems a bit overkill... reflex waipers solve the problem of your blades freezing/lossing contact in the winter.. but then again up here in northern alberta it usually doesn't get warm enough in the winter to cause tons of ice on the vehicles... plus when it's -30 celcius if you hit your windshield with hot water and you have any rock chips.. .your windshield will crack big time

let's see;

replaced upper and lower balljoints on burb, check
replace warped rotor on burb, check
replace drag-link on burb, check
tweak steering on burb, still need to do
move cav from attached garage to my garage, soon

yep just aboot ready

What do you guys think should I leave the SS hood om my cavi for the winter? The scoop is a hole with a stright shot to the motor and I do not know if the snow/cold will effect anything?

^^ the cold prob won't matter much but there is a chance that if enough snow gets in there it might cause some issues when it melts, but it would have to be quite a bit.

As far as all the heated stuff.... let us know how it goes...

If you have a place to plug your car in... a battery heater is really nice (mine stays on my car all year long), they also make oil pan heaters (just sticks to the bottom of the oil pan), wich helps with warmup a little.... and a block heater (goes in a freeze plug hole) does wonders.

As far as wiper blades... I've got Bosch Icons on my car and I love them.

If I can get my crappy landlord to get our plugins working again... I'm planning on installing an oil pan heater (already have a battery heater)... then all I have to do is throw my stock rims back on my car when the snow starts to stick.... The stock rims have pretty much brand new full out snow tires on them.

Teknik, I doubt the hood will have an ill effect on the motor. The old 2200 has no problems running in sub 10F weather. My car has been drifted under 4 feet of snow before, I dug a hole to the door climbed in and started it to help it melt faster.

Once it starts hitting 30's in the morning I'll prep for winter, which reminds me got to get some stabil for the bikes. Wish I lived somewhere where it never snowed..

I still think that heated mirrors/blades/windshield wash fluid would not be that useful.... and here the average winter temperature is around -16 degrees celcious and usually hits -30 for atleast a 2-3 week span... just seems like a lot of unnecessary wiring etc... also those everblades are ridiculously priced.... just topped up windshield washer fluid and put on my new blades... will pull out the block heater cord once it hits around -18 - -20.... other then putting on my winter tires i'm now ready...

Heated washer fluid is done, but itś only as hot as the engine at any given time, so itś not really there when its needed the most. However once the engine is upto temp, ice and bird sh!t come right off.

Heated wipers are a DIY job and are done on the drivers side. They get hot enough so that snow will not form on them.

Also, I now have a 400 watt heater built into the defroster vent which greatly reduces the time it takes to get a clear windshield. It also contributes to cabin heat a little bit, which is nice.

Next are the mirrors. Is there a way to take the glass part off without destroying the mirror?

2002 Cavalier 2200 5spd