Where were you then?
I was doing trips to Swansea (from Yorkshire).
On one of the trips down in a petrol Fiesta it was well below freezing, perhaps below minus 10C and just about every truck on the road, entering Wales, seemed to have pulled over with a waxed fuel supply.
In Swansea bay the sea was actually frozen in piles as the surf hit the shore. I had at this point almost chosen a Fiesta diesel, which would have been my first and the incident put me off diesel until 1991.
What were you doing/driving at this time?
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If it was the same year - Winter (January) of 1984 I was in the Army based at Catterick Garrison - diluting diesel with petrol. Just before going on exercise...
...it was cold wasn't it?
I have been on exercise in Norway and been warmer because they gave us the right gear to be that cold and get warm again and the right fuels to keep vehicles running - tight gits!
By the end of the 1st week I had had enough and killed the engine on my truck (the old branch through the radiator trick) So back to camp for me :)
I was then an operator on a flatbed Bedford MK 'POD' with a UBRE fitted. UBRE - Universal bulk refuelling equipment.
These UBRE's were two seperate mounted aluminium pods (2000litres) so you could carry two different fuel types delivered 'under pressure' and driven off a small hand cranked 'donkey engine' that itself ran off diesel. Obviously if you had two fuel types you had two donkey engines.
We used to have these small engines so addicted to a mixture of Ether/Ethanol they were next to impossible to start with out it!
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Never seen it, but reliable stories of lorry drivers stuck beside the road lighting fires under the fuel tank to de-wax the diesel.
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I remember a night around then.
Crossing the county border in my asthmatic diesel, it became obvious the county I'd just driven into hadn't yet gritted. I slowed to about thirty, and the temperature gauge went down, the heater was trying to deliver more hot than the engine had spare. The passengers moaned.
I suppose that's why diesels are so economical, more of the fuel is converted into energy, and les is wasted as heat.
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Driving an old motorbike about. It took me two days to do 300 miles, on mainly "A" roads, due only to the number of stopped vehicles. Part of the route was through Oxfordshire, where it was -14C. I stopped at pubs to thaw out from time to time, may have exceeded "the limit"... My beard was solid ice! Warming up of the knees and fingers was extremely painful. Face looked like a tomato, except where the "Mk VIIIs" had been. For the first 250 miles, the machine's wheels didn't touch the road very often at all.
Are you sure it wasn't the cold snap we had in '81, or thereabouts?
Edited by FotheringtonThomas on 18/09/2008 at 20:43
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FT,
I remember 81, but the winter i`m referring to was 84 as it the journey was in an 84 Fiesta.
I was on a bike in 80/81 though and the foam in the seat froze solid with internal moisture. No option but to keep on using it ;(
Makes my eyes water thinking about it now though ;)
Tron, Yep it really was cold. I have a memory of pulling off a forecourt in South Wales and thinking that If I had an engine problem on the way back I could be in trouble. It was below minus 10C and the cold had penetrated everywhere over several days.
Anyone in Swansea that winter when the surf froze?
Regarding Derv, I think there was a new BS standard after the 84 waxing fiasco. Winter derv OK down to minus 15c after that and minus 5c in Summer.
I remember worrying about waxing in the early 90`s on first moving to diesel, but never experienced it.
Remember those electric heating elements at the top of fuel filters? I was surprised to see in Screwloose`s recent tech specs post - that a bi- metallic strip diverts fuel to the coolant system first, for heating pre fuel filter derv, on the Peugot.
I assume that all modern fuel filters now do this?
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"I remember 81"
Yep, I remember it too - I was teaching and one of our "projects" was to take daily weather readings to send off to Nottingham weather centre. One January morning, our min thermometer read -23 degrees C.. I remember taking the reading myself - none of the kids on the rota turned up!!
Coldest reading I have ever known. Oddly enough, it didn't feel that cold - it was calm and sunny, no wind chill - but yes, I also remember seeing many stranded trucks on the A46 North of Leicester whose diesel had waxed.
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I was trying to drive back from Surrey to Hertfordshire on the M25 in a Mk.1 Golf 1.6D. Every time I got up any speed the wind chill would wax up the fuel, so I had to pull onto the hard shoulder, let the heat from the engine block de-wax the fuel, and then carry on.
I wasn't the only one suffering ...
Us early diesel car adopters suffered for our fashion!!
Edited by boxsterboy on 18/09/2008 at 23:25
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>>Every time I got up any speed the wind chill would wax up the fuel,
I think you'll find wind chill only affects animals, certainly not diesel fuel.
Sub zero temperatures are just that, it doesn't matter what speed you blow the air at a thermometer, it'll still read the same (unless it's a wet and dry).
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>> wind chill would wax up the fuel I think you'll find wind chill only affects animals certainly not diesel fuel.
If the tank was leaky, for instance, and the outside wet with fuel, there would be an effect, though. Otherwise, AOL - unless you're "wet" with sometrhinbg, or in the natural state, "wind chill" = 0. Tell that to the weather forecasters, though.
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Winter of '84? At home in Minnesota, enjoying a typical local winter. This is why Minnesota had/has very few diesel cars on its roads--you can expect winter temperatures in the minus 20 and minus 30 C range, without fail. Coldest I saw in 37 years in my hometown of Gladstone: -36C (and colder to our north). Ah, memories--changing a tyre in the middle of the night, -20 or below...somehow I wound up in La$ Vega$.
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84 was a doddle compared to 62/63 - on my Triumph every day from December 62 till March 63 - never fell off once - thaw came and came off on gravel - wonderful memories - is that why my bones ache now days
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Ps 1984 I was driving Morris bull nose 3 ton works van - we carried gas bottles and blowtorch's - came in handy a few times
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bosnia dec 1997 near tomaslavgrad (TSG) up in the mountains Case 721 front end loader on snow clearance which usually started with a game of find the vehicle in the snowdrift
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Maybe it was the wind blowing the engine heat away from the fuel lines, rathr than wind chill per se.
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I was trying to drive back from Surrey to Hertfordshire on the M25 in a Mk.1 Golf 1.6D.
IIRC the western section of the M25 was not all open in '84, I recall cutting up through Watford on a regular journey up to near St Neots from the Woking area.
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I passed my test in '79 and it seems to me that the first few years that I was driving featured harsh winters and lots of snow, I recall going down south of Guildford where the snow piled up againast the south downs, banked at least 6ft high either side of the lanes.
I has a Dolomite Sprint in '84, i commuted by train into Waterloo though around that time there were train strikes so I would take the car to Heathrow and get a tube into London, I took a friend of my parents with me who I am sure was not impressed by the Sprint's tail happy nature and the need for copious amounts of opposite lock on the icy and snowy roads, never lost it though.
ABS, TC and ESP - pah!
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I was on my trusty Suzi 250X7 all winter, oddly a highly-strung 2-stroke is great for riding in the snow and ice, as below 4000rpm there's no power at all :)
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Nothing notable about 1984 [apparently] but this from some site or other confirms a December problem?
1981 (December):
1. December 1981 was the COLDEST (and probably the SNOWIEST) since the mid 1870s in the north and since 1890 in parts of the south. The coldest by the CET record (=0.3degC) in the 20th century & one of the COLDEST 5 or 6 such-named months in the entire record. SNOW lay for three weeks in many areas; At Braemar, Scotland, it was the coldest month on record, with a mean temperature of (minus) 3.4 degC, and 11 days with screen temperatures failing to rise above (minus) 10 degC. At many places from the Midlands northwards, the mean monthly temperature was below freezing point. HEAVY SNOWFALLS from the 7-8th (traffic dislocation in London on the 8th), and again on the 11th, HEAVY SNOWFALL in central and southern Britain (Heathrow=30cm; Gloucester=15cm or more) with BLIZZARDS for a time. On the 13th, further HEAVY SNOWFALL for northern Britain (temporary mild spell in south). By the 21st, SNOW DEPTHS reached 20 cm in parts of central and northern England and southern Scotland. (A 'fine' White Christmas' but no snow on Christmas Day itself!).
2. At Shawbury (Shropshire) the night MINIMUM TEMPERATURE fell to -25.2degC early on the 13th December. This a record low value for December for England.
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I was delivering early morning newspapers on my Raleigh Olympus during the winter in question.
Saved up my newspaper money and bought myself an adult Sun Solo when I got a bit bigger.
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IIRC the western section of the M25 was not all open in '84 I recall cutting up through Watford on a regular journey up to near St Neots from the Woking area.
Yes I think you're right. This was the Surrey section
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For some unkown reason, Dec 81 was when Crewe & Alsager college chose to send me on the training course for a SUMMER Mountain Leadership cert at the newly opened Plas Menai. Newly opened, but not completed, and hours before we arrived someone had just cut the power supply with a backhoe loader. We spent the whole week cooking on trangia's and drinking bottled beer in the pub (the electric pumps weren't working), but the scenery was stunning, the navigation in virgin snow a very useful experience, and on the overnights you were waking up to find ones boots and all one's drinking water frozen solid.
What was I driving ? a Mini Clubman whos' wipers were barely powerful enough to shift the rapidly accumulating snow off the windscreen. Darwin award of the week - the driver who tried to overtake me and the snowplough I was following down the A55 - I could barely see it's orange beacons when it was 20 ft in front of me !
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