This might be too soon to bring this up... but Wisconsin weather usually isn't this Hot and normally the evenings drops from high 80's down to the 60's at night. A 25-35 degree temp change can be Downright chilly in the evening. What do you ROADSTER guys do for warmth the rest of the year??? I had a heater in my last roadster so that the wife wouldn't complain about the cold... but that heater would throw the heat "weakly" onto her left calf before dissappearing into the COLD air...! We usually get only a couple weeks of warm Roadster weather and the rest of the year we wear shorts under our snowmobile suits just in case the weather changes..!
Heater. Top. Windwings. Lexan bolt-in rear quarter windows. T-shirt. Sweatshirt. Hooded well insulated jacket. Knit cap. Thermal gloves. Lap blanket when temps go under 20 degrees. Stop for coffee. Stop to take a leak. Stop for coffee. Stop to take a leak. Stop for coffee. Well . . . you know how that goes. And that's in sunny California. In Arizona, head for the donut shop and no further when it's 16 degrees out. four miles I can handle. Much more than that, screw it....
Dress in layers. I keep a knit cap and a pair of gloves in the door pocket. I have no insulation in the floor or firewall and the heat coming up through the floor actually helps. I'll let you know more after our first "real" winter now that we no longer live in SoCal.
You can try something like this: http://store.safetycentral.com/12voheauflbl.html Just have it on it's own fuse. The way the problem was solved for me --- the wife said for me to go and she would stay home. Remember, no mater how cold you are, when you buddies ask you if you are cold; just smile and say no.
You ain't lived till ya learned to double clutch and heel/toe from inside a down sleeping bag I drove a MGA with no heater, no side curtains and a hole the size of a liscense plate cut out of the back window for over four years. The top was a pain in the *** to put up and relatively useless so it only went up if it rained two days in a row. What ya learn to dread is getting off work from the restaurant at two thirty in the morning with twenty miles between work and home and you can see the stars, in January. At least when it's foggy it's also warmer.
Dress in layers and bless the heat coming from the Flathead. If you ride a bike in Mn. as well, you deal with it. I also have a ****pit cover that zips down the center (snaps on or off) that helps quite a bit if I'm solo driving in inclement weather. Pile-up bound the second week in October should be interesting. Ha Ha.
OK, when I had my T bucket this is what i would do .....I would start in January by running out in the snow naked and making snow angels, by the time those cool spring/ fall nights came around they felt down right balmy!
C9 knows what's up. I've been into the freezing part of the 30's with no windshield - but his setup is certainly realistic and likely really comfortable for cold weather.
I'm gonna do that this year. I just got my bucket goin so I gotta get used to bein cold. I've been hangin out a lot in the beer cooler at the B P but i'm not sure the bucket has anything to do with it... it's a good excuse though.
Why thank you Mr. Kevin. Sometimes I think the roadster set up for cold weather ain't much more than a coupe with missing windows. Then I remember all the air leaks around the door - even with weatherstripping. What's the definition of a roadster? A rolling air leak.... Fwiw, here's a pic of the rear quarter windows. 3/16" Lexan, bolted to the top's oak upright. Requested by Sweetie cuz she's short enough that the wind turning in off the windwings hits her right in the ear. Even without the rear quarter windows she'd go along in low 30 degree weather . . . course, the destination was usually the small airport restaurant about 12 miles from the house. And, by the time breakfast was over, temps weren't too bad. The initial quarter windows I made were 1/8" Lexan. There was some serious aerodynamic flutter/buzzing going on with this one. Mainly because the window is only supported in the middle. Making another set out of 3/16" Lexan cured the buzz. You'll need a slightly longer set of stainless sheet metal screws and a couple of 8'32's for mounting. I've run these quarter windows for maybe four winters now. For those who worry that the wood threads in the oak bows may get loose and sloppy, after the threads are cut in the wood, put a drop or two of Cyanoacrylate glue in them. It makes the wood threads very hard. You can also renew wooden threaded screw holes by sanding off some sawdust - any wood will do - packing the hole with the sawdust, putting a couple drops of cyano on it and once cured - a few seconds usually - redrill the pilot hole and thread the screws in which cuts fresh threads in the new material. This works well for guys trying to use original wood bracing that's had the screw holes stripped out. Cyano glue is available in any hobby shop that handles R/C aircraft. Goldberg is an excellent brand, get the thin watery stuff and store it in the fridge when not in use to extend the useful shelf life.
I will never have another roadster again. In Ohio its either raining, too damn hot from the sun or too damn cold. I hadnt found any roadster weather during the year and half I owned it. I must be getting older or something.
Good clothes go a LONG way toward keeping warm. Cotton ****s. Wool is good. Synthetic stuff like ski or cycling gear is a close second to wool. I'll have a WS soon but probably never a top. A good base layer and a good shell to block wind will do most of the work.
my mother solved the problem for The 28. she made a quilt to match the car! of course after she made the top that was pretty much uneeded. that flatty puts out some heat!
Yeah. A coupla days back, 111 degrees on the breezeway thermometer. (Last night about a 60 mph wind gust through breezeway. Damn near blew me off my feet. They had a tornado about 100-150 miles south.) Same day in Lake Havasu, 119 degrees. Not much roadstering either place. Most of the big wall hung thermometers end at 120 degrees. You can buy thermo's in Lake Havasu that go to 140 degrees. They're called "Lake Havasu Thermometers." I think I'd just as soon have the thermo stuck at 120 than know it's even higher. "It's a dry heat he said as he melted into a pool of shimmering liquid." Along those lines, a pic from last Wednesday, day before the high temps took off. About 100 degrees on the dry lake at 1100. We were punching holes in paper targets with a 44 mag and popping welded steel targets with swinging pendulums using 22 mag and 22 LR. The shooting was done to the left of the pic where there's a big bank of dirt for a backstop plus about 3 1/2 miles to the end of the lake and maybe another mile to a quiet dirt road. Pretty safe area to shoot. Note the barren ground. No probs with rattlesnakes out here. They know they'll die with no shelter from the hot sun as well as the aerial predators - hawks and buzzards - will get em. We keep looking at this lake with it's very smooth surface. It's about 2 miles wide and 4 miles long near as I can tell. You'd want to check it carefully after the rains and give it some time to dry out, but it sure looks like an amateur top end run would be a kick. (Every year the 4x4 troops venture out to the wet stuff and get beyond stuck.) The road out to the lake's dirt road turnoff is paved almost all the way. Since we've gone beyond the commenting about it stage and are now wondering maybe so. Maybe so. Anybody got a radar gun?
It will make a big diff once you get a windshield to hide behind. I used to ride my street bike to work during the last gas crisis. It got a little miserable being exposed to the wind for 25 miles. I stuck a Bikini fairing on it and it made a heckuva difference. Don't forget to weatherstrip your windshield otherwise the wind - and rain - will come right underneath it. My 32 does ok in the wet stuff up a moderate rain. When the cloudburst hits and a crosswind is blowing you're gonna get wet regardless. Interesting part about running ******* is that most of the moderate and lighter rains will go up and over the windshield. Don't forget you can make emergency raincoats out of a plastic trash bag. Laugh if you want, but sometimes a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do. Girls too.
Rumbleseat, who has driven his '34 all over the country over the last several years, had an interesting approach: He put a row of snap fasteners along the lower edge of the dash with the mating snaps attached to a blanket. This turns the ****pit below wherever you raise the blanket to a trap for the heat coming through from the engine and/or heater. Seems like some windlace or additional weatherstripping around the door edges would help a lot too. A nifty 1930's acessory was a sort of triangular sidecurtain made about the height of the windshield poat and running back onto the door snaps, sealing off the area between the windshield and steering wheel from the world with less fuss than full curtains.
G-1 Navy flight jacket, silk scarf and kashmir lined leather gloves. I keep a lap blanket in the car too. I actually enjoy the roadster more when its in the 40's and even the 30's out then when its in the 90's.
Some more traditional blanket tech to go with the snaps ( the snaps keep the thing out of your pedals, as well as sealing!): Old car blankets had weights sewn in around the edges to help keep them where they belonged. Remember to use traditional lead weights, not commy treehugger healthnut zinc things.
Try a Pendleton motor robe.... http://www.pendleton-usa.com/jump.jsp?itemType=CATEGORY&itemID=47&path=1%2C2%2C6%2C47
Evaporative cooling works well back to maybe Amarillo. After that, the nominal humidity is too high for evaporative cooling to be very effective. Personally, I use those goofy-looking gizmos that you hang around your neck. However, no matter how hot you think it is going to be, always pack your weather gear: Raincoat A-2 Jacket gloves with liners hail hat (mine is one of those quilted nylon cold weather rigs from my Air Force days) gator gl***es or goggles If you are wearing Levi's, the above stuff in combination should be good for any temps down to about 40 F in the dry, or 50 F in the wet. Add quilted ski pants and some heavier gloves, and you can probably go down to freezing. REAL cold weather ops need either high-tech materials, or the ever-popular down. Am I just guessing on this stuff? Nope. Most of the information here was found out the hard way......
There's a bag in the trunk of my roadster with a hooded sweatshirt, lined leather jacket, 2 knit beanies, 1 pair of insulated gloves and a motor cycle rain suit. I've used them all on occasion. The hooded sweatshirt gets the most use. If it's under 40 or over 100 I leave the roadster at home and take the coupe.
No fair. Next summer I hope I can leave the roadster home and take the other roadster. Some guys never learn....
How about heated motorcycle/snowmobile suit.Each component plugs into next(gloves to jacket to pants etc.)then to 12v power source?Weather proof & warm?
For what it's worth I've added a small windshield now. HUGE difference. Actually had to finish out the floor as it created a m***ive updraft ****ing exhaust and engine stink straight up through the ****pit.
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