Since I haven't been driving my 190D it's legally inspected status had slipped so yesterday I set out to wrest it from its sleep and get it inspected. It was a mere 25F when I went out but the car started nicely enough. Unfortunately there was some ice on the inside of the windshield so I let it run while I scraped the outside, then left it running and went inside to warm up.After the ice had some time to melt I started checking all the inspectables, lights, horn etc. everything was good until I tried the washer and found a no-go. Started digging in and found the whole system was frozen up solid.
I dug out the bottle and brought it in the house. It took a lot of hot water to melt the green Rain-X out. Apparently its not rated for below freezing...With the bottle clean and charged with good orange Rain-X I could finally hear the pump running but now water was spraying out from a white thing in the line, is that a check valve? Turns out its plastic housing wouldn't stay clamped, a couple zip ties fixed that.
Finally the last few inches of hose had to spend a few minutes inside my coat to melt an ice plug.
Only took an hour an a half but we finally passed inspection. Then made a run up to Keene to get coolant for the Jetta's radiator replacement. I'm going to let a local guy do the replacement, its gotten all the way up to 12F today and since my car has AC the whole front bumper has to come off for the job, not a big deal but not something I want to do outside in the cold...
