Ice-pocalypse

[charby]

30 miles south of Minnesota border, we got iced and more coming.

[230RN]

Ahhhh.  Cloud cover near zero% this AM, supposed to hit 45°F by noon.

Got about 2 square feet of un-snow-covered glass on my car facing sunward (east), ought to be able to just slide the snow off'n it by 1PM just from the greenhouse effect and go do some erranding.

It takes most of the dirt and pine pollen with it when I slide the snowpack off.  I  usually put an old broom on the hood (bonnet) to do this with before a snowfall so I don't even have to open the car door to get it.  It just sits there with the broomhandle sticking out so I can just grab it.

Question (metallurgical):  I used to pick up the windshield wipers before a snowfall so it's easier to slide the snow off.  This puts the wiper springs under some tension while it gets real cold out, as in sometimes down to 0°F or below.  Does this kind of "cryo-soaking" for a couple of days affect the springs at all?

I think my wipers have become less effective lately, but I'm not sure if that's because of screwing up the springs under this treatment, or that I just need new wiper blades. (Which I do anyhow, but I wonder about the cold affecting them.)

Terry, 230RN

[zxcvbob]

Question (metallurgical):  I used to pick up the windshield wipers before a snowfall so it's easier to slide the snow off.  This puts the wiper springs under some tension while it gets real cold out, as in sometimes down to 0°F or below.  Does this kind of "cryo-soaking" for a couple of days affect the springs at all?

I think my wipers have become less effective lately, but I'm not sure if that's because of screwing up the springs under this treatment, or that I just need new wiper blades. (Which I do anyhow, but I wonder about the cold affecting them.)

Terry, 230RN

The cold does not affect the springs, although I'm a little hesitant because you said "at all"   (how many significant digits do you mean by that?)

[230RN]

^"(how many significant digits do you mean by that?)"

Good question, especially since I'm usually the one bitching about indeterminate qualifiers like "reasonable."  As in "reasonable gun controls."

I basically mean, "could the apparent loss of effectiveness be due to this level of cryo-soaking?"

I know there's a lot of back-and-forth about springs, as in "does keeping a full magazine affect the springs?" and the sometimes-answer: "No, it's the cycling of the springs that wears them out."

So there's a bit of spring lore/technology that's out of the bounds of my experience, and cryo-soaking at this level is one of them.  I do know that "real" cryosoaking (~minus 320°F) relieves some stresses in rifle barrels and tends to make them more accurate, but we're only talking ~0°F here, and I'm sure there's no sharp cutoff where cold affects springs at X°F but not at (X+1)°F.

I do know that military hardware sometimes becomes unworkable in some cold-weather battle scenarios.

Terry, 230RN

[TechMan]

Currently Cloudy and 59F, here in Cincinnati

[230RN]

Well, I was going to take that segment out and put it in a separate thread, but zxcvbob answered before I could do it, so I left it there.

:)