Door issues and freezing temps - how are you making it through the winter?

[jason bouchard]

Not for a manual trans.

Can be done, I've seen it but I'm working on finding out more info now

[Darel]

OK, I haven't had time to mess with this lately but I've narrowed down the problem to not the waist seal, but the small 5" or so vertical section of the window along the mirror (leading edge of the window). I admit I kind of neglected this short piece in the whole process so far. As soon as I can get out there to lube it up, I am hoping that will be the fix. Fingers crossed.

[Wantboost]

OK, I haven't had time to mess with this lately but I've narrowed down the problem to not the waist seal, but the small 5" or so vertical section of the window along the mirror (leading edge of the window). I admit I kind of neglected this short piece in the whole process so far. As soon as I can get out there to lube it up, I am hoping that will be the fix. Fingers crossed.

Just be careful with silicone spray it will create fish eyes in your paint .

Try this product form GM safe to use in weather stripping. Regular silicone has petroleum products and can eat away at the rubber . To avoid this with a spray spray on a rag first then apply .

Genuine GM Fluid 12345579 Dielectric Silicone Grease*

Sent from my SM-G950W using Audizine mobile app

[Darel]

OK, first off I'll say I was wrong about it being the vertical rubber channel, it's definitely the waist seal. There's the rubber lip, then under that there is a felt strip that actually wipes the glass. On my car this absorbs water and freezes to the glass all the way across.

Couldn't find anything in the garage so I had to go get something. At the NAPA near my house about the only thing they had was "Silicone Lubricant Spray", Mac's 8300. It did specifically say it was good for rubber seals and weatherstrip so at least I know I'm not hurting anything.

What I did to avoid getting this crap all over everything was take a putty knife and fold a scrap of rag over it. I then soaked the rag in silicone spray, holding it inside of a garbage can, then wiped it into the felt strip. I tried to really soak the felt strip good, but I will probably have to repeat this several times as I try to displace the water that's already soaked into the felt.

Window up, window down, window up, clean. Lather, rinse, repeat until at least most of the streaking is gone.

I initially was going to dry the felt out with my heat gun, but not knowing the temperature limitations of the felt, or the myriad hydrocarbon-based trims and rubbers surrounding it, I basically just blew it off quickly at low temperature.

16 degrees this morning and both windows moved freely. However, I will qualify that by saying it was a clear morning with no frost or precip, so there wasn't really much to test it. However normally it would have been frozen.

I'll update again on the first moist morning.

[snocat17]

Have you tried putting a small amount of vegetable oil on a paper towel and wiping along all rubber seals?

[Darel]

No, it's really just this felt seal. I've already used weatherstripping lube all the way around the window. The glass doesn't stick anywhere other than the felt waist seal. Never heard of using veggie oil.

[S5_SID]

Any updates on what has worked or not worked?

Curious in the case I want to go to the mountains

[Darel]

I definitely think the silicone above helped. It's been cold, and some nights of snow, light frost once, and no sticking. I am pretty sure this method will need a couple of re-applications but I really feel like I'm getting somewhere. No sticking in the last 2 weeks.

[ColtS5]

Interesting thread. I had a left rear brake freeze to the rotor. We had rain all morning, temps were 38 degrees, then a quick drop to 15 degrees. The entire left side of the car was coated in ice, and when I tied to drive, the left wheel dragged in the parking lot. Dash lit up, and I feared the worse.

Dumped some hot water on the wheel/brakes, and all was good. Had done a four wheel brake job with full brake flush, so this was odd.

[Darel]

Reminds me of that picture making the rounds on the interwebs last year of that Honda (I think) completely encased in ice parked at the shore.

[Darel]

Frozen yesterday morning. This is after 3 soaking applications of silicone. Looks like it's just something I'm going to have to live with, and keep a putty knife in the trunk. Seriously, I can't believe no one else is having this problem. It's so pervasive.

[Neil F]

I assume you have searched for similar problems. It looks like there are others.

audi a5 windows frozen site:www.a5oc.com

audi a5 windows frozen site:www.audiworld.com

audi a5 windows frozen site:www.audizine.com

[HazeMyth]

I don't think the seals are necessarily the problem. It's not very humid here, but it is cold. With that said, I can have my windows freeze up on me, but it generally pretty rare. Over the last week I've had it happen twice, and in both cases I was still able to carefully get the door open. Even with the door open, the windows would not roll down even the slightest bit. So, in my case it seems the actual window is freezing in place, not freezing to the seal. There's no easy fix that I've found. To avoid breaking my windows I've just had to be very careful opening the door, very careful pulling it closed (it usually won't latch), and then giving it a tug after it's already mostly closed by not latched. In one or two instances I've actually had to drive with the door slightly ajar for a couple of blocks before the car heated up just enough for the windows to function again.

[Darel]

It is both bitterly cold here and exceptionally humid, normally over 80%. Glad I'm not the only one. I don't even try closing the door with the window up, usually with the door open if I give it a quick shake grabbing the top of the window, that will free it up. If not the putty knife does it. Just kinda hoped there was a fix for it, it's not like Germany is exactly a tropical country that this sort of this shouldn't have been considered or addressed.

[HazeMyth]

Honestly, any car that unrolls the windows just a touch when you open the door seems to have this issue. So that pretty much covers cabs/verts and many (but not all) cars that don't have frames around the windows.

If you do choose to close the door with the window still frozen, use caution.

[03TLSinCO]

This situation sounds like the perfect excuse for a remote starter. Let the car warm up a bit before you need to open/close the doors.

[Darel]

Manual

[HazeMyth]

This situation sounds like the perfect excuse for a remote starter. Let the car warm up a bit before you need to open/close the doors.

Do a bit of poking around, and you'll find that remote start on these cars, while possible (ish), it's excessively difficult. As far as I know, there's no "out-of-the-box" method for doing this. I believe I've seen in the past where one person had it working, but their cost was well into the $5k range by the time they had it work. As far as I recall, they had some secondary issues that came up later due to the auto start. It was a long time ago and I'm feeling super lazy right now, otherwise I'd go search for the thread and link it.

I remember discovering the remote start on our Tacoma was one of the biggest facepalm days of my life. We had owned the truck for probably close to a year before I discovered there was a remote start on it. The dealership had never advertised it, and I hardly ever drive the truck. One day I accidentally hit a button on the remote and the truck started a few seconds later. I thought I was crazy at first, but it turned out we had a pretty high end Viper remote start system on the truck. The installation was shoddy at best though, so my wife and I have rewired everything more appropriately. The poor installation was eventually causing batteries to brick themselves, because the required disable/kill switch was soldered by a fking toddler and it was shorting out.

Manual

There are ways to put an auto start on a manual these days, but naturally that includes putting something in place to keep it from attempting to start when it's not in neutral. So for most of us, that still wouldn't be an option since we've got decades of experience of leaving the car in gear to oppose whatever grade might be on the road. For me, I just can't trust an E-brake and always feel the need to leave my manual cars in 1 or R depending on the direction of incline.

[snocat17]

Try vegetable oil on the felt seal. Don't drench it, put some on a paper towel and gently wipe it.

[03TLSinCO]

Manual

Ah, yes, you've mentioned that before. I should have remembered.

[Treeskier]

There are ways to put an auto start on a manual these days, but naturally that includes putting something in place to keep it from attempting to start when it's not in neutral. So for most of us, that still wouldn't be an option since we've got decades of experience of leaving the car in gear to oppose whatever grade might be on the road. For me, I just can't trust an E-brake and always feel the need to leave my manual cars in 1 or R depending on the direction of incline.

Yup. I had a remote start in my manual WRX for 10+ years (it also had frame-less windows). It takes someone who really knows what they're doing to install it properly, but depending on the car there are a number of solutions. In Subaru's, the manuals used to have a "neutral wire" which allows the ECU to know when the car is in gear or not...so an install on these is fairly easy. For other cars, it involves (at least used to involve) a "shut down process" - basically a series of brake pedal presses or other buttons in a certain order to "arm" the system so it knows the car is in neutral and the remote start can be used.

So, yes, a remote starter can be installed on a manual and yes, it's more complicated...but a good installer will know how to do it for sure.

As for the Audi-specific complications, well, that's another set of challenges which I haven't tried to tackle yet, so can't comment...but it seems to have been addressed elsewhere.

[denokarter]

It is both bitterly cold here and exceptionally humid, normally over 80%. Glad I'm not the only one. I don't even try closing the door with the window up, usually with the door open if I give it a quick shake grabbing the top of the window, that will free it up. If not the putty knife does it. Just kinda hoped there was a fix for it, it's not like Germany is exactly a tropical country that this sort of this shouldn't have been considered or addressed.

Started having this issue as well living in Toronto, Canada. Have you ever found a solution?

[Darel]

Just running my driver's license between the glass and the waist seal if it's icy out. That's about all you can do.

[denokarter]

Just running my driver's license between the glass and the waist seal if it's icy out. That's about all you can do.

Lol I’ll give that a try
Right now I have my heat gun on standby 😂