snow in the engine bay?

[rcnut14]

so, living in PA, of course we went from 60 degrees all week, to 4 inches of snow today, to 65 all next week

anywho, where i park the fiesta it is facing into the wind. today it snowed like 4 inches with very high drifting winds. car is pretty covered in ice and snow.

i opened my hood, and there is a solid covering of snow in the entire bay. has anyone else experienced this? hood was definitely fully closed. i assumes this means water can easily get in there swell, maybe not a bad idea to get a large tarp for thunderstorms and snow storms

 

[XR650R]

Looks like when the wind is just right, it'll get snow under the hood. I've driven in some pretty serious rainstorms and the engine stayed relatively dry. This was probably a freak occurrence.

 

[Filandro]

The water that get splashed around from hitting puddles and driving through rain storms is surely worse.

In the proverbial old days, you'd carry around WD-40 and a spare distributor and set of points, because water would cripple the car. Popping off the distributor cap and drying and spraying would be normal.

Now? Meh. I mean less water is better (cars in arid climates do better), but go ahead blot dry things that are usually never getting wet, such as battery terminals. You could go swimming in my 4C engine bay if it rains. The engine cover has grills and the water comes in like a waterfall. The only thing it might bother is battery connections. Gotta keep some dialectric grease on them. Everything else? No issues.

 

[Intuit]

In all these years, surely can't be the first one to have a lot of water under the hood and to my knowledge, no one has reported any issues as a result of it. Some people like to wash their engine bays. It's true that freezing-water can do damage but the "water" was already ice when entering the bay. So expansion should be a non-issue.

Just a reminder, wipe down your door seals with silicon spray lubricant and you won't have to worry about a door/trunk freezing shut. Because of the integrated latch/door handle design, still may have to beat the ice off the door frame when it's sealed up after a good night of sleet. Don't want to be pulling on that latch/handle too hard.

 

[M-Sport fan]

About 70 miles or so east of you, and yes, my car was also parked facing into that westerly winter 50+ MPH squall we got yesterday,

I have not opened the hood yet (it's still pretty much frozen shut!), but the whole grille/front fascia/clip is iced over, so I would not be surprised at all to see frozen stuff in there.