By Kamil Kaluski
It was wicked cold here in New England last weekend. Where I was, in western New Hampshire, the temperature dropped to -20F, which is about -28C, for those of you outside of the United States. All kinds of issues occurred at those temperatures: broken pipes, dead batteries, and heating furnaces that just couldn’t keep up with the cold. The next day, with the temperature at 20F (-7C), it felt like spring. Everything is relative.
But in some places of the world, the low temperatures last more than a day. Siberia is one of those places. In the city of Yakutsk, winter high temperatures are typically below -20C (-4F), and the record low is -64C (-83F). It is the coldest city in the world. It is therefore no surprise that even starting a car at those temperatures can be challenging. It’s even more challenging when that vehicle is a decades-old UAZ 469B.
The short video below goes throw the challenges of not only starting a vehicle in Siberia but also safely driving it. Some procedures are really eye-opening, if not unexpected. I wonder how a modern car would do in those temperatures. Enjoy the video.
Jeff Glucker
This shows up in my feeds, too. Her videos, e.g. on how to warm up the bath house just for washing yourself, are very neatly made.
The UAZ has famously poor ventilation, some only have an opening under the windshield to let in air. Very cool video though!
So basically, they recreated the double-walled, vacuum insulated side windows of the W140 S-class, a car which Russians are well familiar with as Putin’s chauffeur in the 1990s and gangsters’ car even today.