Hi, help please ! I forgot to put winter deicer and the wheater turn cold real fast, below 45 and it seem to me that it was frozen in the tube but it i took the wipers and tubes off and put them in the house for a night ! Put them back on place and nothings came out -_-

P.s. the headlamps washers work find !

 

Jets will be frozen also. You need a warm place to thaw out the whole system.

Then run the washers until nearly empty. If the system is frost damaged it will leak at those points.

If all is leak free then refill with proper windshield washer fluid with a minus 35C rating if it is available in your area, get the lowest temperature stuff you can find.

 

Having the washer nozzles on the wiper arms is a definite two edged sword. Nice in nice weather and can be problematic in the cold. Even with the best possible fluid, the design seems prone to icing and clogging, maybe due to gravity pulling the fluid back down in the tube allowing it to become frozen. The headlight washers have gravity in their favor being below the reservoir.

 

Just bought a new 2013 XF AWD 3L
it got cold really quick, 37 below freezing last night. window washers wont work but HL washer works fine. it has winter wash liquid in it. Anyone else had problems.

 

Most windshield washer fluid is rated to only -20*F or -30*C so if you're seeing temps colder than that there's no real mystery.

 

Out west here minus 35C washer fluid is the standard and occasionally we can buy the real thing full strength minus 40C...

 

Headlight washers are higher pressure. It doesn't take much ice to block the windshield washer jets. They are volume oriented and operate at lower pressure. The headlight washers need the pressure because the headlights have no wipers.

 

The washer lines have non return valves. They are full of fluid at all times. The issue is the very tiny orifices on the windscreen washer jets which easily freeze up. Headlight washers operate at higher pressure and may blow out the ice, maybe not.

 

True- I see the -40*C stuff now and then but it's 30% more expensive. The OP is in northern Quebec and mentioned -45 degrees. No fluid I know of is good for those sort of temps.

 

Thanks for the advice!
I guess no real fix then, unless I can find the super low temp rated fluid

 

If yours are frozen, everybody else's should be too. Is it really -37*F where you are?

 

If he is in Illinois, uh, no way it was -37F. It's possible there may have been a couple places with -37 wind chill.

 

That would make sense, and 'windchill' has no effect on inanimate objects. If it did- why don't thermometers react to the wind?

 

I didn't say it was -37*f
I said it was 37 below freezing!
Water freezes at 32*f
37 below that is......
-5*f

 

Back in the stone age when we used degrees F in Canada, temperatures were expressed as 'so many degrees' below or above freezing. A hot summer's day would be stated as being 90*, not 58* above freezing.................

In any case, if your system froze up at -5*F, it's likely that you don't have even the cheapo fluid in the car. As stated above, that freezes at -20*F or I guess in your measuring system, 52 degrees below freezing. The good stuff mentioned by jagualr freezes at -40*C, -40*F, 40 below zero F or 72 degrees below freezing. For reference, the OP was seeing temps of 81 degrees below freezing.

 

Hmmm - perhaps then we should agree to use degrees above absolute zero so there won't be any confusion, lol. Pretty sure I've never heard or seen a weather forecast say something like "the high today will be 10 below freezing." Or even 100 degrees below boiling... And the OP simply said "below 45", so now we have no idea what that means... ; )

 

Having grown up and lived most of my life in Quebec, I'm about 98.7% sure that the OP's first language is French. For all it's other failings, this province adopted the metric system to a far greater degree than anywhere else in Canada and generally speaking French speakers use metric more than the English. The reasons why are not relevant to this discussion.

I'd be surprised if the OP translated degrees C to degrees F for the sake of asking the question, or still uses degrees F in daily life. For anyone under the age of 60 , the Fahrenheit system is as outdated and useless as buggy whips and as strange as measuring distance in furlongs per fortnight.

Perhaps using degrees above absolute zero as common reference would make sense, but is it degrees Rankine or Kelvin? .

 

Purely tongue in cheek, but when the poster says "below 45" that could mean, for example, 44. Now, if that is 44 C, we don't have a freezing problem at all. However, if what the poster meant (and I strongly suspect this is the case) -44 degrees, I think we can all agree that's damn cold whether it's F or C (or even 44 degrees below freezing!)

 

LOL
It was 24*F in Chicago today, or
8*F below freezing
24*F above zero
-4.4*C
The above temperatures were local at 728ft above sea level
221.9m
You lot can work out what the equivalent would be at 1 atmosphere at sea level
Cloud ceiling was 172 feet above GL
Or 900 feet above Sea level
Or 274 m
All I know is that after flushing out the window washers all is now good.
Thanks for all the replies, had me laughing

 

I live in the north north of Québec and when we say it's minus 45 degree that mean it is cause we can't get outside for long ! lol but I never experience windshield washer fluid freeze before -_-

p.s I can't locate the pump can someone point me where it's located ?


The got damn joy of winter -_-