De-Icing Your Car Door

While the winter time can be an extremely beautiful time period, it can also cause some fairly interesting problems for your car. One of the more common, and frustrating, problems that you can find yourself faced with is a frozen over car door. De-icing your car door doesn't take a whole lot of specialized equipment, in fact you should have most of the items necessary in your house already. All you really need to do is follow these directions, and you will have a free door once again.

1. Check all your doors. It is always a good idea to check all the doors on your car to make sure that you are actually iced out of your car. After all, if one of the doors isn't iced over, you can simply open it up and then start the engine to warm everything up. Over time, this will allow the ice on your frozen door to melt and allow you an easier time of entering the vehicle.
2. Start at the keyhole. It is always a good idea to begin de-icing your car door at the key hole. This will allow you to unlock the door, which is a necessary step to actually opening the door. Perhaps the easiest way to do this is by heating up the car key with a lighter before you place it into the lock. However, you may want to wrap one end of the key into a cloth to help protect your hand. Once the key is warmed up simply place it into the keyhole, the heat from the warmed up key will melt the ice. Keep in mind that you may need to repeat the process a couple of times before the key will completely get through the ice.
3. Thaw out the lock. If you find that you can't get the car door unlocked, or get the key to turn, by warming the key up then you need to try thawing out the lock directly. The easiest way to do this is by using a hairdryer. Simply plug in a hairdryer to an extension cord and point it at the lock. Set the temperature to hot or high, and let it work on the lock for a few minutes.
4. Work on the door. Once you have the lock unstuck, you need to begin working on the door itself. One of the easiest ways to do this is by using an ice scraper on the ice that covers the doors seal. If necessary, you can also use the hairdryer to work on this area of the car as well. Once you have the seals unstuck you can then begin pouring some windshield wiper fluid to help get rid of the ice. The windshield fluid will help to thaw out the ice and allow you to open the door.
5. Wipe down the door. After you have thawed out the door enough for you to open the door, you need to wipe it all down. This will help you to remove the water from the melted ice, which could end up refreezing the door and causing you to go through all of this hard work again.