Man, looking at Houston weather, those folks are getting blasted with some very bitter cold (for them). Predicting low teens. Say goodbye to tropicals, and citrus if that materializes.
Kevin, if you havenât yet, might be good to open the coolant drains on it, so that it can drain out some when it does melt again. Wonât help as far as what damage has been done, but might prevent further.
Water is kind of odd as it solidifies, it shrinks in volume from 32F to ~20F (from memory, so approx), then it starts expanding (which is where the damage comes from), then at some colder temp starts shrinking again.
On a positive note, if you just had a boil over and then refilled, there is a decent chance that quite a bit of the original anti-freeze mixture was still in there. So even though you refilled with water you might be at 25% or more glycol. It hopefully was enough to prevent freeze damage.
When you go to restart it, be sure that the block and radiator are fully âdefrostedâ and the coolant is all liquid. Even worse things can happen if you try to run an engine which has ice in the waterpump, radiator or somewhere elseâŚ
Temperatures in Siberian village sink to -88F.
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YesâŚwe are 9 degrees this morning in East Texas. Colder than places in Alaska for instance. Our zone levels are being pushed!
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Kevin,
Iâve not seen a tractor engine without freeze plugs, so thatâs some built-in defense. As Chickn mentioned, freeze plugs arenât hard to replace. Just look the engine over carefully to see if any have blown out. Sometimes there are some freeze plugs you canât see because they are encased in the housing which bolts the transmission to the engine. Also Chickn probably took it for granted that you know, how to remove a partially blown out freeze plug. But, in case you donât know, if you see a freeze plug which is partially blown out or leaking, you may be tempted to drive a screwdriver in between the freeze plug and the hole to pry it out. DONâT DO IT. The round hole the freeze plug fits into is a sealing surface and must remain pristinely smooth. You donât want any gouges in it. If you have to remove a freeze plug, take a self-tapping screw (the kind with a hex head used to screw into metal - It will have a little drill bit head on the end of the screw) and use a screw gun to drill that into the middle of the freeze plug. Then you can get something like a hammer or nail puller on the end of that screw head and pull the freeze plug out.
Itâs not useful to you now, but for future reference you may not be aware antifreeze not only prevents freeze-up but also helps with cooling the engine. Anti-freeze lowers the boiling point of the water so that the coolant doesnât boil off as easily.
Antifreeze also serves as a rust/corrosion inhibitor. That may not sound like a big deal (after all, who ever heard of an engine block rusting out?) but internal engine corrosion is hard on water pumps and freeze plugs can rust through. Also proper anti-freeze can prevent cavitation in the water pump and cavitation around the cylinder walls of diesel engines. (Am I making you feel worse, yet?
)
Seriously though, Derby, Chickn and Steve333 are right. All may not be lost. Freezing doesnât always break things. Iron or copper pipes can sometimes freeze without breaking. I even freeze stuff in mason jars in my deep freeze sometimes.
Just make sure you get some anti-freeze in the tractor and let it warm up so it circulates everywhere as soon as is practical. Just because freezing doesnât break things the first time or second time, doesnât mean it wonât eventually break something from freezing/thawing repeatedly.
Lastly, just a reminder to anyone who hasnât thought about it, that itâs a good idea to put some anti-freeze in any spray equipment you store outside. Iâve seen spray pumps broken because they froze. Iâve even lost a spray gun because of freezing, even though I thought I had removed all the water from the sprayer. Now I just put a little anti-freeze in the sprayer and run it through, in the fall. It only takes a little bit of anti-freeze.
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My gosh Derby, is that thermometer right? Thatâs got to be some kind of daily record at least?
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I love your dog, he reminds me of mine (in attitude, not appearance.).
Us humans dealing with this cold down South are like, âOh goodness, look at the temperature! Itâs so cold! BrrrrâŚStay inside!â
And your dog (and mine) is just totally nonchalant about the whole thing like, âWazzup? How âbout throwing my ball?â
Then again, it may be easier to be nonchalant about the cold when youâre wearing a fur coat. 
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Yes, youâre right⌠but my dachshund does NOT have the same attitude!! Bruce loves it though. He will just lie out on the deck and wish for the snow more often.
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thats insane! coldest we got actual air temp record was 10yrs ago. -50f at the customs building on the big black river. that winter was brutal! jan and feb never got above 0f during the day. with winds there were days of -70f windshield factor! water mains 20ft underground were bursting. i can relate to these people but we usually arenât that cold for long periods like they are.
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Ice , ice, baby!
I have block heaters in all of my cars. I plug the wifeâs car and mine in whenever the temp is 0F ish or lower. Makes a HUGE difference. The car starts easily and it warms upâas in the vents will actually throw out heat in short amount of time. I set mine to run 2 to 3 hours before iâm ready to go so it isnât on all night. I installed them and they are easy outside of the coolant that comes gushing out when you remove the freeze plug. Mine were both located in the back of the engine (front wheel drive 4 cyl cars). I just teflon taped the block heater threads and no leaks were detected. You do have to run the engine and make sure you get all the bubbles out of the coolant system.
New GFS has NO snow for us hereâŚeverything is Minneapolis and north. Still shows OVER an inch of rain âŚwhich is crazy for this time of the year.
I think one of the biggest draws to electric vehicles (say a Nissan Leaf/Tesla model S/X) are the ability of those cars to preheatâŚeven when not plugged in. Obviously you are eating away at range when you do that unplugged, but getting into a preheated 70F car on a cold winter morning would be nice. Like fossil cars, electrics take a winter hit tooâŚbut nothing you can do about that. I watch my mileage and my little car drops from about 30mpg in warm months to around 24mpg this time of year (if not lower)⌠All that thick cold grease/oil/tires losing pressureâspinning tires (snow)⌠really eats into the mpgsâŚ
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I would say so , my brother six miles west of me had -12 and another friend of mine showed-14 on his truck. Here in town they had -8. I live on a hill but it is only 150 feet above the valley and there are miles of flat land north of me that are actually at a higher elevation than I am. I think that sometimes there cold air settles down hill and fills the valley up below me to the point it overtops my little hill
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19F along the Gulf of MexicoâŚthat is some brutal stuff⌠look back to the north and Canada is out of cold⌠everything got dumped south⌠full warmth ahead.
I enjoy cold weather, but the homes down here in general are not properly insulated (at least most of the track homes built in the mid to late 90âs) nor are the heating systems up to the task of keeping up when temps drop below freezingâŚwe have a forced air system that uses a heat pump and if we set the t-stat about 66 and the temps drop to about 32 the heat runs all the time, and itâs expensive because itâs electricâŚweâve used our fireplace more times this year than in the last 2 or 3 combinedâŚWe donât mind piling blankets on at night, in fact I prefer it, but who wants a cold house unless itâs summer timeâŚback to the insulation, the recent bout of cold weather prompted me to look at ways to keep the heat in and cold out. Our bedrooms which all have outside walls are much colder than the rest of the house. Part of itâs the windows, which even though theyâre double-pane get a lot of air penetration at the bottom. Iâm sure after more than 20 years, the outer gaskets arenât sealing well. So a couple trips to Loweâs for some peel and stick weather stripping, (also tried one of those draft buster deals but it wouldnât work with our type of window), I was able to drop the temps around the base of the window by about 3 degreesâŚnot much but every bit helps. Iâm sure all of you currently freezing in the great white north really feel bad for meâŚ
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. When I was a kid, we lived in Pennsylvania, and for some reason we had baseboard heat. We had much the problem you describe, except my parents, to save money, set the thermostat to 60 (and of course, that meant there were some places in the house that were below 60.)
We were constantly sipping tea and huddled under blankets in the winter. It wasnât until I became an adult that I realized most people did not do this.
Of course, as my parents said, it builds character. That chill you have in your body right now is all your character building. Think of it that way. 
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I love the old âit builds character sayingââŚfunny how I find myself saying the same thing to my kidsâŚTalk about coldâŚwhen I was a kid we lived in the mountains of West Virginia in a small house my dad built, wasnât much more than a cabin reallyâŚwe were at about 3000 ft in elevationâŚthe only heat in the place was a pot belly stove and we slept in a loft up on the second floorâŚwe used lots and lots of quiltsâŚlet me tell you, using an outhouse in the dead of winter when itâs 0 degrees outside is a unique experienceâŚ
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Iâm in PA and live in a house built in 50âs with base board heating. Recently we did an addition to the house and that new area has forced air heating. I love the base board heating. So much more comfortable to the body compared to forced air.
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