Scotty love the show!! the blizzard froze my coolant. I drive a 2022 atlas 4cylinder with the turbo, and bought it in florida. Im in indiana now visiting in-laws for Christmas. Its -8 right now and my coolant is frozen.
- Do i let it sit with the engine on for an hour? Ask a neighbor if i can thaw it in their garage for a day or two?
Unless you drained out the factory coolant and put in plain water there is no way that your coolant is frozen. (If it did it would crack your engine block.) Standard 50/50 mix of antifreeze and water will not freeze until the temperature is 35 degrees below zero, 8 below won't do it.
I didnt do that. Its been the same coolant from day 1 and always at the same level until this morning. -8. Windchill brings it to -36. It is frozen and i need everyones best educated guess on what to do, not their disbelief on the sitation.
@gabrielgrape - You will probably get much better answers if you can the attitude.
How do you know it's your coolant that froze? Are you sure you're not looking at the windshield washer tank instead? Your new vehicle came with antifreeze to protect against such occurrences.
I have a low coolant warning, looked at the resivoir, its beneath the line but completely frozen
I didnt do that. Its been the same coolant from day 1 and always at the same level until this morning. -8. Windchill brings it to -36. It is frozen and i need everyones best educated guess on what to do, not their disbelief on the sitation.
If your coolant is really frozen all you can do is wait for it to thaw out and hope that the engine block is not cracked. I would not try to run the engine with frozen coolant. (Think of your water pump trying to move solid ice.) However, wind chill does not figure into whether your coolant will freeze. Your engine only "feels" the ambient temperature (in your case 8 below zero, not 36 below).
https://www.wheels.ca/news/should-you-factor-in-wind-chill-when-pouring-antifreeze
-8C = 17.6F
@doc, I thought he was talking real temperatures, not the phony foreign metric stuff. Either way if it is frozen there is something very wrong with the coolant mix in that vehicle.
@chucktobias - I absolutely agree. Wind chill is a concept that only affects humans and their perception of temperature, not inanimate objects like engine blocks. There are two types of countries in the world, those that use the metric system and those that have been to the moon.
Do i let it sit with the engine on for an hour? Ask a neighbor if i can thaw it in their garage for a day or two?
So let's assume that VW screwed up and your coolant mix isn't what it is supposed to be, resulting in this freeze condition.
As I said, do not run the engine. If there is a neighbor with a heated garage (or at least an attached garage where the house warms it a bit), have your Atlas towed there and push it into the garage, letting it thaw out for a couple of days. Better yet maybe they would let you put a space heater under the engine to help the thawing process.
Once the engine is thawed out, carefully start it, look and listen for problems. If coolant froze inside the engine itself core plugs could have been pushed out resulting in massive coolant leaks, or in the worst case your engine block could have cracked. (It would have to be very badly frozen all the way through for this to happen. If you're lucky it is just the radiator and coolant tank that are frozen.)
https://www.total911.com/what-to-do-if-your-car-freezes-this-winter/
https://kostusa.com/what-to-do-if-your-vehicle-freezes-this-winter/
Okay thank you very much for the help on this. We've moved it into a garage and are going to purchase a space heater. I appreciate the insight on the potential damage there. I was able to get in touch with a mechanic and he stated at this point once unthawed the coolant has been compromised and needs to be replaced.
We will most likely beg a dealership to put us in for a check up before driving it back down south.
Sound like a plan, however I would be inclined to stay away from the dealer and see if family or neighbors can recommend a good local independent shop to check it out. You know the coolant in there is no good anyway or it would not have frozen up at "only" 8 degrees below zero. Fingers crossed that the engine did not freeze internally!
So plot twist, i called a few dealers around here before i read the message and one of them said something interesting. He said it would unthaw and its most likely that no major problems occured. He said coolant doesnt expand as much as other liquids so theres a lower chance of internal damage. He also said its most likely that the resivoir itself was frozen but not the coolant down in the engine, that its rare for that far internally to be frozen and he himself had 3 frozen cars earlier in the morning on his lot, thawed them, and theyre fine. I asked how i could detect any problems with the vehicle and he stated the atlas's are so finnicky that they would tell you almost immediately after turning the car on with all the warning lights.
Turns out it must be at least 32 in the garage because after half a day no snow has melted off the car and theres no water on the ground. Tomorrow morning were going to buy a space heater and see where that takes us.
Also it seems the rest of this thread has turned into a moon landing debate of some sorts. Some people are just out of this world am i right?
That's good news for sure. It didn't seem like it was cold enough to freeze solid all the way through but the fear was that the antifreeze wasn't up to snuff. Sounds like you should be OK. While your luck is looking up go buy a few lottery tickets!
As far as the moon thing, topic drift has been a part of online discussion forums since dialup BBS days. We try to minimize it here but sometimes things do go off into the ozone.
Sorry about drifting off into outer space! This will be our 3rd Christmas on this forum, the questions get old and repetitive after a while (not this one) and some of us like to banter a bit for fun. Feel free to ignore or join in. 
the coolant has been compromised
pick up one of these for a few bucks, and just add more antifreeze. You shouldn't need a heater.
@mmj - Best advice I've seen today!
Wind chill is a concept that only affects humans and their perception of temperature, not inanimate objects like engine blocks.
False. The faster wind blows over a surface, the faster it cools as the boundary layer air is stripped away.
There are two types of countries in the world, those that use the metric system
Hate to break it to you, but the USA measurement standards are metric. They simply convert it for the general public. The inch is formally defined as exactly 25.4mm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inch
Now quickly tell me how many inches there are in 4.7 yards?
those that have been to the moon.
The Moon landings
Contrary to urban myth, NASA did use the metric system for the Apollo Moon landings. SI units were used for arguably the most critical part of the missions – the calculations that were carried out by the Lunar Module’s onboard Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) during the computer-controlled phases of the spacecraft’s descent to the surface of the Moon, and for the journey of the Ascent stage of the craft during its return to lunar orbit, where it would rendezvous with the Command and Service Module (CSM).
NASA has decided to use metric units for all operations on the lunar surface when it returns to the Moon. The Vision for Space Exploration calls for returning astronauts to the Moon by 2020 and eventually setting up a manned lunar outpost.
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/08jan_metricmoon
It was a funny joke on July 21, 1969. 169.2"
it didn't age well
@mmj - Please see the attached article, thanks.
https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/global/wind-chill
OK there it is paragraph 3
"The only effect wind chill has on inanimate objects... is to shorten the amount of time for the object to cool. "
You said: "Wind chill is a concept that only affects humans"