All 4 doors frozen

Lock de-icers are not only useless, they are extremely bad for the locs, as they wash out all lubricant. If you absolutely must use it, you should allways lubricate the lock thorougly afterwards. Preferably wait till the de-icer has vapoured off, then use special lock oil, preferably with humidity repellant. You should probably check the alignment and guiding and lubrication of the lock rods and arms inside the door too. That said, are sure that it is the lock sylinders that prevents the doors from opening? If you have remote controlled locks that might not allways be so, but I do not know all Subarus.

Asbjørn

One solution is to use an extension cord with a hair dryer.

I am guessing that using hair dryer to melt the ice will help.

I woulldn't say that it is necessarily a Subaru locks problem though. Had three Subarus over 20 years, never had it happen and here in WI it does get cold at times. (But I always keep cars in the garage overnight, so maybe that's a factor).

DK

I've tried that in the past, the problem is that the parts of the door that are stuck are well-hidden inside structures.

Yousuf Khan

No I've already tried that several times, the part that needs heating is inside the door. Heating the outside of the door is useless.

That is the problem, I have no choice but to keep the cars outside. However, the one with the manual locks is never frozen, i.e. not the Subaru. One of the reasons for having a Subaru is to drive in the winter, but that's kind of useless if you can't even get into the Subaru.

Yousuf Khan

Love to have that done, once I can get the doors opened. It's going on the 3rd day that I've been frozen out of my Subaru.

Well, I haven't been able to use the manual door locks for a long time, so I don't even use the keys, even in the summer. I only use the remote, so I'm dependent on the electric locks to open it.

Yup, just the remote.

Yousuf Khan

Now you know why mechanical component has to be serviced before winter. On the bright side: subarus have at least two of them unless FHI beancounters worked on that "problem" lately

I know it is a hassle, and perhaps ultimately not practical, but, I wonder if use of a car cover would prevent the problem? Not a cheap experiment but it may help.

It might help, but I have trouble just remembering to put the wipers up before a snowstorm or a freezing rain storm, so remembering to put a car cover over it, is quite a lot to ask. :)

Besides, I've had the doors freeze up between the morning and the afternoon. It might have been perfectly fine in the morning, but by the afternoon it'll have frozen. So unless I put the cover on as soon as I've stopped using the car, even for an hour. Weather here is a bitch at this time of year. We're on our 3rd straight day of -20C weather. The cold spell is not expected to break till tomorrow when it might go upto a balmy -2C. :?

Yousuf Khan

One thing you could do is have the car towed to a service station and have them keep it in their garage overnight to thaw. Then either they could fix the underlying problem or you could drive it to a dealer.

Not knowing exactly how this freezing problem is perceived, I have to mention that the most common way car doors freeze is by the door seals (or whatever you call the rubber seal at the edge of the door and frame). At least every autumn we have to lubricate these with a silicone oil on a small sponge. A neighbour of mine used to bring a bucket of hot water to pour over the car door every cold morning. No wonder that he had to repeat that action for ever. Keeping the hot water inside a big plastic bag and pressing that to the door and lock would be a little wiser :)

Asbjørn from Norway

You need to remove ALL GREASE from the doorlock mechanisms and lubricate with a thin-film dry lubricant that won't get stiff in the cold or hold moisture. It realy helps if it prevents corrosion as well.

Undercoating/rustproofing on the latches almost guarantees trouble in cold weather.

You can always lock a space heater in the car and have it come on half an hour or so before you need into the car.

Sure tha battery on the poor car isn't dead? Dead battery = permanently locked out if the key-locks are non-functional.

Our Mystique freezes the rubbers to the body - our old LeBaron used to freeze the locks themselves. O took them out and cleaned them with heat rizer penetrant (hey, I had a can left, and no heat rizer valves) and never had another problem (well - I DID sell it the next summer -

- - -)

Er, would you care to explain how do you wire that contraption to the car and remote start it?

You run a cord out like for a block heater (remember those) and plug it into a timed extention cord.

Don't forget to unplug it before you drive away.

Depending on how cold it gets there a light bulb might provide enough heat without the fire danger of a space heater.

I still think what the OP ought to do is get the car towed somewhere, put it indoors to thaw out so the doors will open, and then have someone fix the problem.

lucky you with easy access to electrics around here it's webasto (and some other autonomous heaters) everywhere (well, everywhere where people can shell out $1000-3000 depending on the config, mostly on diesels, though some affluent gasoline clientele likes to have their ass warm right off the start also. the heaters on petrol cars are more rare though)

Myself, I have difficulty parting with that much cash for webasto.

that's the typical solution diesel owners implement here when their car freezes to a point where it can't be started (or, sometimes, while in motion on a public highway :^] )

Little brother's Kenworth got an RV water heater installed as a boiler, with a heater core and a couple of PC fans and a circulating pump (24 volt runnon 12 - was adequate). It kept the bunk warm on the coldest nights and brought the truck from stone cold in a northern ontario winter in less than 2 hours to the point it started cleanly and threw instant heat. A 10 lb propane bottle got him through a week of normal winter but he switched to 20 lb cyl because lots of places charged the same to refill either one.