Frozen door locks

[mmoy@us.oracle.com (Michael Moy, Oracle Rdb SQL Engineering, 603-881-1943)]

Went out to the car after work and all of the locks were frozen (doors and
trunk). I could get the key in though. I was worried about this this morning as
the driver's door lock was frozen when I arrived. I probably should have left
one of the doors unlocked.

Fortunately, someone that was still in the office had a few deicer tubes and he
we got the car open. I picked up a few tubes and some lubricant at KMart after
visiting a few other stores (they were out). The KMart was almost out too.
We've had a day or two of rain followed by cold (-6 C) temperature here in
southern NH.

While I was in the office, I did an AltaVista search for frozen door locks and
found a tips page. If isopropyl alcohol is available, put some on the key
before putting it in. It turns out isopropyl alcohol (I don't know what else)
is in the deicer. I looked around for alcohol or matches before I found someone
with deicer.

When I was almost home, I remembered that I had some alcohol swabs in my
planner (I carry alcohol swabs, cold and headache tablets and several bandages
for minor emergencies). I suspect that the swabs may have done the trick
without the deicer.

Michael Moy
mmoy@us.oracle.com
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