Frozen Doors TJ

I don't know about the TJ but on the YJ the factory grease congealed so I couldn't lock or unlock my doors in cold weather. I finally had to take them apart and lube the offending parts with some motor oil. You could have a similar problem.

Good luck,

Earle

The dirt/crud/lube is freezing up.

Your going to have to clean them out and lube with a silicone lube that doesn't freeze. Quite a bit of work, you might be able to get some spray silicone lube and force it into the latch.

Something like this.

With the caution that before you lube anything with any oil or grease, you try pouring that oil or grease at the local ambient temperature. In some places it gets cold enough to turn all but the best multigrades into something about as thick as Vaseline.

Trick is to get all of any old congealed grease out. If you just use a penetrating oil, it may just evaporate and leave the old grease even more nastily distributed in the locking mechanism.

The best cure I've discovered is a home made witches brew of pure synth multigrade motor oil, STP, and Marvel Mystery...the latter of which you could probably substitute refined kerosene for.

Earle Hort> I don't know about the TJ but on the YJ the factory grease congealed so

It's not that cold here, but yeah I hear you and I have a similar "brew" for such occasions. I have a quart of Type F auto transmission fluid left here by a previous property owner... I don't know what the factory used to lube the door mechanism on my Wrangler, but by the time I got to it it was like molasses in January.

Cheers,

Earle

multigrades

WD40 won't stay like motor oil will. I really don't know the best lube for this application, but it appears that you have to redo it every couple years once the factory lube turns solid. I tried some high dollar bicycle lube with "suspended teflon particles" but it really didn't do any better than 10w30 or ATF.

Cheers,

Earle

temperature.

congealed

Anybody mention graphite yet? It's a "dry" lubricant. Used it on a regular basis when I lived in Vermont and New Hampshire. And in case of emergency heat the key with a match or cigarette lighter (holding it in a gloved hand) and let it warm the mechanism up. Might have to do it more than once.

We're talking about some weird looking levers and gizmos inside the door, that connect the lock cylinder and the internal lock control with the door latch. These are lubed from the factory with a type of gunk that congeals after a few seasons. You can heat up the key with a match or cigarette lighter all day long and it won't even touch those parts.

Cheers,

Earle

Ooops, disregard my previous post. :-)

graphite is good for the inside of locks but a bit messy. Lithium grease for low temperature works. And this stuff probably would too. :)

Heh, you can't smell it, or taste it, and it looks "water white". What they didn't say was whether it was toxic :-) (not that I normally go around licking my doors, just to be clear !)

Dave

However the MSDS indicated no known toxicity and the FDA approves it for use in food processing plants, so if there is any it's either damned low or so long term that it's not possible to test for it.

Note that I did say blow the parts dry and then lube them with something else . The reason I use WD40 is that the pressure spray does a decent wash job and not for it's lubrication properties.

I had good luck us> WD40 won't stay like motor oil will. I really don't know the best lube

'taint the working material that's nasty, it's the carrier liquid they use to keep it suspended. You're talking about teflon and that stuff won't react with much of anything.

Amen! I need to re-do the doors assemblies on my MJ after a few years. If someone presses the latch button before you put the key in to unlock it you're in for a wait. The gunk on the mechanism holds a couple of parts in a position that makes the whole linkage look like the release button is still pushed and there is no way in hell to get it to unlock - even with the manual lock button - until that crap warms up and lets the parts re-align. I think another part of the problem there is that there is a spring on the piece the button hits that seems to break regularly - at least it's been broken on every one I've disassembled. Most of mine have been replaced with springs made from an appropriate sized safety pin - seems to last a lot longer than the original ones.

Read the MSDS, there's no "carrier fluid" and no Teflon.

By the way, what do you recommend for my satellite dish, to keep the ice off of it? It's that time of year again.

Cheers,

Earle

something

decent

PAM cooking spray.

That works for a while but if it does anything like it does on some of my big pots it will age to a gummy mess. This PTFE spray-on stuff seemed to hold up pretty well in the weather. I had one door on an outhouse) that would get ice built up in the hinges to the point that the door didn't open until Spring (genius carpenter hung the door to open out, so the hinge was exposed). I didn't have any notion of keeping the ice off when I sprayed the hinges, but I get almost no ice buildup there any more, or at least it breaks off easily. I don't use the outhouse for much besides storage anymore (Hurrah for indoor toilets in the winter!!) so I don't pay much attention and that might have just been the weather instead of the spray. At least the bears didn't try to lick it off.

Best answer I've seen for the dish is either a fairly heavy (10 mil or so) plastic sheet stretched over the dish, especially the small satellite type. Another guy sitting here swears that something like Turtle Wax will also work, but I have my doubts on that one.