Brine, not just salt
Chicago pre-treats and treats heavily, and much of it is applied as liquid brine rather than as rock salt.
That matters. Rock salt sits on the surface and bounces; brine wets everything and flows into cavities, seams and around fasteners. It is more effective at keeping roads open and considerably more effective at reaching the parts of a car that never dry out.
The failures follow in order of expense:
- Brake lines. Steel line corroding from the outside, hidden under clips, failing when full pressure is applied — the exact moment somebody needed it. A pedal that has gone slightly longer over a season is an inspection of the whole run.
- Caliper slides and hardware. Seized slides wear one pad and leave the other. "The pads looked fine on that side" is a symptom, not good news.
- Wheel speed sensors bonded into aluminium knuckles. Replacing one becomes drilling one out.
- Rotors welded to hubs, causing runout felt as a pedal pulsation.
- Every underbody fastener, which becomes a question rather than a formality.
Alleys
Chicago has an alley network almost no other American city has, and for a great many households the garage opens onto one.
Alleys are narrow, unevenly surfaced, and lined with things that do not move. What that produces is contact damage rather than wear — mirrors clipped on garage frames and fences, bumper covers scuffed, wheels gouged on kerbs and sunken drain covers.
They also concentrate the freeze-thaw damage: alley surfaces are patched rather than resurfaced and they hold water, so they break up faster than the street outside.
Expressway crawl
The Kennedy, the Eisenhower, the Dan Ryan. Long periods barely moving, then bursts of speed, on concrete with expansion joints.
Crawling is a brake problem — pads doing all the speed control at full vehicle weight with no aerodynamic drag helping. Concrete joints are a suspension problem: a constant-frequency input for the length of a commute, which fades dampers rather than damaging them. A car that floats over a crest and needs two movements to settle has stopped controlling its springs.
The wind, and the lake
Wind off Lake Michigan is a genuine load on the lakefront routes — continuous correction against a crosswind wears tyres asymmetrically and works the steering.
The lake also drives the snow. Lake-effect events put down more than the forecast suggests and they trigger more treatment, which is more brine, which is more of everything above.
Window regulators deserve a mention of their own here: cold makes the runs stiff, the motor works harder against them, and cable-type regulators fray and jump their drum. The tell is a grinding noise with the glass tilting, and it is the regulator rather than the motor.
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