When does it get too cold to work on the car?

-7C. I just came in from installing new bulbs and adjusting the headlights on my car. Working some OT tomorrow, kind of looking forward to the drive in

North Florida.  Frozen pipes exposed to 18 are now thaling and spouting water.  I'm driving around to customers making wet repairs... but its a balmy 40 degrees.  No complaints.

This past Friday was too cold in a garage with no HVAC.  In younger days I've changed brake shoes outside while sleet and snow was falling.  Filed points in a convenience store parking lot in the rain. I don't remember those days fondly.

In reply to David S. Wallens :

4 degrees today wind chill 34 below.  
  I work in a T shirt because up here in the arctic tundra the shop  is as warm as the house is. 

Now-a-days none of my cars have brake shoes, nor points, so I don't have to suffer the extreme weather.   LOL

I've worked on my car in below 0F weather, but it was necessary to get to work repairs, not fun repairs.

Yesterday, about 1/2 hour after the wife put the turkey in the oven our power went out. My genset won't carry the 220V oven but it will handle the rest of the house just fine, including the furnace, lights, TV, computers, even the microwave. 

So I drug it out of the shed and cranked it over - no start. Went and got a spare battery, found the jumper cables, hooked it up and it spun over way faster, still no start. Got out the starting fluid.....nuttin. (Yes it had some gas in the tank)

It was only then that I noticed the choke lever was in the off position, set the choke, cranked it over and it fired right up!

The power company said the power could be out for a number of hours, so I went down a few miles to the gas station and filled the spare can, brought it back and filled the tank, then fired it up again. While it's warming up I went to the basement and shut off the breaker so I wouldn't kill any poor linesmen and found my connector cable.

It was then that I noticed it had the wrong plug end on it for the house end.....the last time I used it I had changed the end so it would work at my buddies house when his power was out for almost a week and I hadn't changed it back. Spent the next 20 min with a flashlight looking for the correct plug end - could not find it. 

All of this in 10-15* temps......too damn cold!

Realized that since it was Xmas day nothing would be open, so I gave up, shut down the genny, put everything away, went in and got a fire in the fireplace going and sat down - just then we got the ping from the power company that the power was back on. 

Today I went and got the correct end from the depot and put it on the cable, put some Stabil in the genny gas tank and charged the battery on it. I'll be ready for the next one!

Two weekends ago I replaced a Civic VTEC solenoid gasket that could have waited in 34 degree temps, in an unheated garage.  Not great, but not hateful.  This weekend was -4.  I am glad nothing needed attention, because that would have sucked.  Bad.

It was 65 degrees in Vegas today so I got the motor ready to go in the F500.

About 50F is my limit

I grew up in the south and transplanted to Michigan. In 25 degree weather, I can heat the garage up to low 40s and that's pretty livable. Anything under 25 and I'm just not equipped to deal with cold toes and numb fingers if not critical.

Today, in the car port, on plywood over gravel, with a daisy heater on the propane tank, I replaced the front pads and rear shocks on the Mazda 2. Temps were in the mid 20s, but no wind at all. I was layered up good.

All was going well until one bolt on the driver side upper shock mount broke off. Flush with the body. Okay, pull the hatch interior panels to see if I can access the bolt threads. Yup. Won't budge. Double nut, nope. Time to break out the welder. Weld nut to exposed threads. Got that thing cherry red. Turned the bolt and pulled up through. Chase the threads with a tap. That's how you turn a one hour job into a four hour job.

TL/DR: mid 20s is not too cold so long as no wind and a heater nearby. Sorry, no pics. I was busy!

It all depends on if it's transportation critical or hobby. Hobby can wait until it's in the mid 40s F or warmer. 

Critical stuff gets done regardless of the temp. I've replaced the transmission in an S10'in the middle of February (think temps in single digit and low teens with snow on the ground) in the driveway, but that was around 2010. Since then I've upgraded from the open driveway to a portable carport (aka tent) in the backyard. With a couple sheets of 3/4" plywood and the propane heater it gets to temps where I work in a sweatshirt pretty quickly even when it's single digits (F) outside.

Maintenance work like fluid changes goes to the local shop my son works at in town.

I've spent enough time working outside to know that 12.5 degrees F is my tipping point, assuming no wind. Wind changes everything.

13 degrees --> okay

12 degrees --> not today

We are enjoying a heatwave here in Ohio with it reaching 26Deg F today!  Need to kick on the garage heater and let it get to 50 or so in there.

When the weather gets colder than the beer, I quit.

I was trying to assemble a trailer in ohio in 15 degrees. I couldnt use my fingers for the nuts/bolts and my beer that was on the ground  had froze solid after the first few sips. 
 

leaving ohio is a worthwile cause(i kid, haha), but i could not function. 

It depends on what I need to do. I'm pretty comfortable in a long sleave shirt down to about 40 as long as I'm moving around a good bit. Add a light jacket and I'm good to about 35. If laying on cold concrete is involved, all bets are off. I have done clutch swaps in 20 degree weather. I'd rather never do that again. 

I did not work on cars this weekend. I was out of town and didn't have anything that needed attention immediately. 

The only thing I need to do on any of my cars is to change the oil on my 2012 Jetta diesel. I usually change it once a year as it has a 10K change interval but I have yet to put that many miles on it in a 12 month period. I kind of forgot as I normally do it in the fall. Lucky for me it will hit 50+ deg. in the Chicago area later this week so the plan is to change it then.  I do need to drag out my kerosene torpedo heater as well. My garage is attached and so there is some heat leakage from the house  and floor that keeps the garage from getting to cold. I think it dropped down to 27-28 deg. over the weekend when the outside temp. dropped down into neg. temps. The ceiling is insulated with 9-10 inches of fiberglass insulation and the garage door has 2" of foam insulation. That all helps to keep my garage above  freezing most of the winter.  

Anything under 50 is too cold. The being said, it was 35 yesterday. I got the Lexus up in the air and start putting zip ties on hoses so I know how everything goes back together. That lasted less than 30 minutes and then I was back indoors

I'd say anywhere below 10C, maybe 5C if you've already got yourself hot and sweaty and don't let the tools get too cold. So that's basically December to March around here. Being able to work on your car during the winter rather than doing everything in a mad rush as soon as it's warm enough so you can rush out to the first event would be an absolute superpower.

First autocross of 2022 pictured, early April:

NOHOME said:

When the weather gets colder than the beer, I quit.

I'm adopting this philosophy.  If it's warmer inside the garage (beer) fridge than the garage, I'm not doing anything.

Quick and easy 15 minutes jobs like an oil change still get done in the cold. No heat in the garage but out of the wind and being dry helps a lot.

Otherwise, unless its an emergency, works stops below 40 degrees.

Generally it depends on how badly I need something fixed.  But as long as I can get it in the garage, it's just "close the doors and turn the heat up a bit" and then we're good to go. 

Sounds like a common theme is that it really depends on the job that needs to be done.  I almost always wind up outside in the cold doing something on the RV to get it ready to go to Daytona every January.  The first year I had the shop I did pull it inside to do some front suspension work, but since then the shop hasn't really been configured in a way that would make that possible.  The work that I'm doing right now is cheating a little bit:  I pulled the intake last week to replace the lifters and discovered that I'm going to need to pull the head to also replace a valve.  Engine access is from the inside of the coach, though, by removing the doghouse and one of the heater vents is right next to the hole in the floor that leads to the engine.  So I plug the RV in, turn up the heat, and once it's warm enough inside - say about 50 or 60 degrees - I get started.  Sure, there's coldness coming through the hole in the floor and the engine parts are are ice cold to the touch, but when the rest of my body is warm, it's not really that bad. 

For anything else, though, when it gets under about 60 degrees outside, I'll work on it but only if you get it in to the shop where I can turn on the furnace.  Laying on cold ground and having all the tools and everything that I've got to touch being so cold just makes my whole body ache.  Not that I haven't been out in the junkyard in the snow to get something, but there's got to be a pretty good reason for that.