Saturday, June 5, 2010

It's the Heat!

I guess Saturday is a fabulous day to do road construction along the main freeway in town. I was coming home from a luncheon and was stuck in 3 mph traffic for about 30+ minutes because they squished the normally 5 lanes down to 2. Apparently my car wasn't terribly happy with me because my little temperature gauge started rapidly increasing.

Seeing as I was stuck in traffic, in construction, and had no shoulder to pull over in, I tried to figure out how to keep my car from exploding. I quickly shut off my A/C and had a gracious moment when the heavens smiled down on me. I had the brilliant idea of turning on the heater. Someone once told me that to try it in a bind. That the heater doesn't actually generate heat, but instead just blows the hot air off the engine.

Unfortunately for me, today it was a blasting 85+ degrees and on top of that I had my heater blaring. (At least rolling down my windows I got a little breeze.)

I couldn't believe it. My gauge seriously went from being two tiny lines away from the scorching "H" to plummeting down half way. It bought me enough time to get to the next freeway exit and pull into a gas station. After checking my fluids, sure enough I was a bit low so I filled that puppy up and I was on my happy way home! The end.

9 comments:

Kristina P. said...

I had never heard of this! Great tip. Even if you almost melted.

Jenni Elyse said...

I was stuck in the traffic as well today with no air conditioning. It was a ton of fun, let me tell you. At least, I didn't have my heater blowing. I'm glad you were able to get your temp down. I was running on no fuel. Luckily, I was able to make to Thanksgiving Point too fill up.

Variety said...

Sorry you got stuck in that mess. But I'm SO glad it's almost done. Well, the AF interchange/Pioneer Parkway project is done - just in time for UDOT to decide to work on the rest of the north Utah County section of I15. Gotta love Utah road construction.

Olivia Carter said...

I heard about all that traffic too. So glad I missed that ugliness!

Good to know about the heater!

Me (aka Danielle) said...

You've gotta love the construction in these here parts. It knows no season..that's for sure!

I had a car -years ago, that had a tendency to overheat. That trick always worked like a charm! Glad you were able to get off the freeway in time!

Heidi said...

Yeah, we got stuck in that traffic at 9pm that night. Aiyuda me!

Barbaloot said...

Yikes! I'm finally so happy that it's hot, I don't think of those kind of things that can happen! Good for you for knowing what to do.

Kayla said...

My old car (affectionately named The Old Grey Woman) used to overheat anytime the car idled. So stop lights were always dicey. We ran the heater on that thing almost constantly. Guess what, in Texas, in July that is not so fun. We were so glad when it was finally time to let the Old Woman retire!

Amber Lynae said...

I am sorry that you had to barbecue yourself to keep your car from exploding. But thanks for the tip. I would have never thought of that.