My car has been acting weird lately mainly on cold start ups. We have had a very mild winter and my car is usually parked inside most of the time, around Christmas I was up north and it got to minus 27C overnight. In the morning i went to start the car and there was an awful clanking noise from the engine for a few seconds, never heard this before. Today, it got cold again and the car was outside for about 4 hours. Went to start it and it did not turn over right away and when it did it idled very rough for about a minute. Battery is a year old, the car does use a little oil about a half quart between oil changes, it's been like that since I have owned it. But never has it made a noise like I mentioned or turned over so roughly. Any ideas as to why ? I figure it isn't used to the cold and maybe oil didn't make it into the timing chain right away. As for the rough start I don't know...

 

Yeah its pretty normal for the G to sound like that when facing -20's and 30's.
Does the crank sound like its a really "old" car; sorry that's the best way I can describe it.
The cranking sounds lower and slower than when in normal temps?

What kind of oil are you running. Synthetic 0w rather than 5w helps at those temps too.

Which province do you live in?

Here are some ways you can remedy it:
1) Battery with around 8-900 cold cranking amps
2) Block heater (best solution hands down)
3) 0w GC

 

You didn't mention whether or not you plugged in the block heater. That's a must at colder than -15 or so IMO.

 

No, a receptacle is a little hard to find in the middle of nowhere lol! I drive to work and I park inside and I drive home I park inside so it rarely sees cold temperatures. I'm using 5 30 full synthetic.

It sounded like a dead battery when starting cranked over and then the whole car shook and ran like crap for a minute or longer.

What really worried me was the clanking noise the engine made when starting the other time I thought it threw a rod or something lol, hopefully no damage occurred. It wasn't low on oil at all when that happened I always keep the oil right at the H mark or just below.

 

What do you think caused it?