Cold climate owners' experience wanted

BrockWI said:

LOL yes, my understanding it is a food grade silicone, but it does make the rubber slippery rather than sticky and makes water hard to freeze to the rubber. I also coat the metal surface opposite from the seal as well.

Click to expand...

Is this a one time application, or do you have to constantly keep putting it on? Someone else had stated they use silicone spray.

I used to put it on every fall, but honestly now it is about every other year, basically if I ever notice it sticky I put some on, but it is supposed to be above 40F when applying. I have to say I was amazed at how dirty the rubber squishy things get and I do wonder if just cleaning it is half the battle

It's interesting that this thread turned into a charge port failure to open discussion. This is my problem, but it's mostly one of my own making. My charge port door has been stuck twice this winter. Each time it's because the prior afternoon I washed the car at the drive-through car wash. The car is then stored overnight in my attached garage. The garage rarely goes below 40 degrees F.

After going through the car wash I open the charge port and dry off the internals. That doesn't help. Leaving the charge port door open overnight in the garage might help and it's easy to do.

The first time the door failed to open I worked at it for about 10 minutes and finally got it to release. Then, to add insult to injury (it was really cold out there in the parking garage) the little door for the charge nozzle was stuck too.

My next step will be to silicone spray the crap out of everything inside the charge port. A tether that can be pulled out to give more leverage is an interesting idea that I'll have to explore.

Silicone spray is the ticket!!! I had the same problem and after I sprayed where the rubber was and even the hinges it hasn't stuck since. I do want to spray it down again in case it might come back but haven't done that yet.