An Experiment Begins
[ January 16th, 2009 ] By: Charles Smith Posted in » Questions
Last year I complained about how caked in snow my wheel wells got. My solution for the past year was to get out of the car and use an ice scraper to remove chunks of snow/ice. That worked, but there has to be a more elegant solution. Some people suggested non-stick cooking spray (also for camera lenses I hear). Others suggested wax compounds like Rain-X. So I figured I would try them out.
A few days ago I decided to spray my rear right wheel well with PAM (the oh so famous spray on oil). So far that wheel well has been accumulating much less snow than the other wheel wells (I also didn’t spray that well), so the initial trial seems promising. So over the next few weeks as it snows and I go and play in said snow I’ll be testing out various chemicals to prevent buildup.
Before I get started officially, I was wondering if you had any ideas as to what else would work? I’m looking for cheap/elegant solutions.
So far:
- PAM/Spray on cooking oil
- Rain-X (usually for your windshields)
January 18th, 2009 at 10:40 am
How about a way to warm up the wheel wells?
Could use some sort of heat exchanger off the exhaust or circulate warm oil in a closed circuit (like a towel warmer) along the wheel wells.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
To build off of Dustin’s idea but adding simplicity, how about just dumping the exhaust into wheel wells? :P
January 19th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
You would probably want some sort of valved diverter - like a sport exhaust on a Porsche or “race pipe” on a street car…
BTW - I just noticed the MS Paint graphics on the bottom of the page - nice touch.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
It may be a bit of a step, but you could always go with rally wheel scrapers.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:05 am
I’m not sure if rally wheel scrapers would work. They work on the interior of the wheel, but the wheel well has been giving me issues. So far the pam/wax has worked better than expected.