The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Winter work.

Don’t let winter slow down your exterior work!

Ed

Nice! My garage takes me all morning to get it to 40°. I’m using an old kerosene heater and the Bondo still drys in those temps. It takes an hour or so before you can work with it, but overnight it drys hard. If I need to apply primer, I’ll add a Mr. buddy propane heater and can get it up to 55°. The high build urethane primer I’m using drys without any issues with the addition of some reducer to get it to spray smoother.

The point is, you can still do bodywork in the winter!

Wondering if we'll have winter here, another warm December, raining now with thunder and 40 - 50 degrees. I won't be doing any body work for a while, but the cold doesn't stop me from mechanical projects. Lake effect snow 225 miles north of us dumped 4 feet in four days, we had lake effect snow here 150 miles east of Lake Michigan.

All of our snow is melting ,we had rain ,even washed the new truck outside .when it is cold I paint after I finish in the garage as I shut the heat off when I am not in there ,(old oil furnace) depending on the paint it can take overnight or the next to dry ,now I am talking brush work for inner panels,frame ext .

When a driveway project takes 1 summer and 2 winters, something like the pic is bound to happen. At least it was cold enough and there wasn't any slush.
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My winter work consists of keeping the snow off the cover, and mechanical work in the garage. Fortunately we've had way less snow than last year.

I cheat.
Floor heat maintains about 55 degrees, lots of natural light.

At this stage of my life , I’ll take the cushy route.

I have a buddy that has floor heat in his shop. Great place to take a nap, right on the concrete.

No winter work for me. I`ve been driving my 1959 past few days.
Enjoying that interior work. I need to do some welding but I read its not recommended under 50 degrees.

I have installed thousands of feet of PEX for in-floor radiant in my HVAC career (retired) If I were building new, that would be my 1st choice. I'm happy as heck to have a pole barn with concrete and gas forced air and able to work on the 2 ton grain truck. I had it out on the sloppy roads last week and had to use the pressure washer before putting it back in the barn, not my preferred scenario.

I have been carefully avoiding any corrosion exposure ever since I got my truck reassembled 3 years ago. The underbody is still quite clean.
Yes - I pamper my ‘54 semi-rad mod , except when it comes to the rigors and stress of rapid acceleration.
The city I live in has gone absolutely crazy with salt applications; the streets are hosed down with brine days in advance of the slightest precip forecast. If the snow actually falls, then the rock salt trucks go out. After it dries off the pavement is white. That’s why I hide it during oxidation season.

I actually had a very bad dream a few nights ago - I was pounding along a soft, rutted gravel road in a driving rain with my ‘54 until I came to the horrible realization that the entire undercarriage and lower half of the body were encrusted with mud and stone.

After the holidays I will go to work on the hot carb issue.
I will do so at a leisurely pace, in a comfortable environment.
In my day I spent a lot of time lying underneath plow trucks in mud and snow , making field repairs and keeping a small fleet of well worn snowplows moving. Today I have it much easier. That’s ok by me.

So glad my friend told me to insulate my garage when building my house. All walls, ceiling and garage door are insulated. I have a 220v heater hanging from the ceiling and I can work comfortably until I need to lay on the floor. For that I grab some cardboard and that keeps the cold away. I hope to get lots done this winter.

Very nice! Get yourself a low profile creeper instead of the cardboard for the floor work. The old bones And cold concrete just don't go well together. I save the cardboard for when I need to lay under a car/truck outside for some reason.

So glad to read about bolters enthusiastically working in cold weather. I used to, but about the only auto related work I do during cold months is planning.

My shop (I love it) is not heated or even insulated. When I really needed to repair something, I used my 55k btu kerosene torpedo heater. It heated up the air just fine, but it took a long time to heat up my tools after days of being in sub freezing temps.

Ha! I've notice this too!

Reminds me of when I worked with my dad at plumbing during the summers. We had to be careful not to leave tools lying in the sun during a lunch break, or they couldn't be picked up they were so hot.

I’ve been taking my dolly's and placing them on my kerosene heater a minute or so so I could warm them up enough to use them.

I use a radiant propane heater that sits on top of a 20# bottle. I point that at my tool box as soon as I light it off. Overnight the garage stays about 45 regardless of how cold it gets outside, I suppose from the radiant heat of the ground and the adjacent heated rooms. But that's still too cold for my hands on the tools. By the end of the day the roll-away and tools are tolerably warm and the room is up to 55.

Before I insulated the ceiling it would freeze at about 31. The insulation has also stopped the ice dams on the roof. And there's about 30 inches of snow on the roof now and that helps with insulation too. Now, about replacing those roll up doors with some insulated ones and that one last big wall...