I had the fortune/misfortune to be in Stowe, VT last weekend where we had low temps in the -20f to -25f and highs in the -5f to -15f (ambient) over three days and four nights. I ran into several problems and pleasantries with the car and thought I would share them to see if anyone else has had these issues or impressions.

RANTS:
GEAR SHIFTING: if the car sat longer than an hour or so and wasn't warmed up for at least 10 minutes, it wouldn't shift out of first in D mode for several hundred feet, when it made a loud "kathud" with the rpm almost revved out. Switching to geartronic did not help.

AWD AND TRACTION CONTROL IN REVERSE: each front wheel would spin with neither getting traction until the engine simple reved and no wheel would spin. This only happened once, but I can't say I enjoyed having to dig out the steel foldable traction things and shovel to get myself out of what appeared to be no more than 6 inches of compacted snow and ice. Interestingly the rear wheels wouldn't engage at all. No warning lights came on on the dash. Does the AWD not work in reverse? situation did not allow me to go forward. ...Not being very smart, I parked the car right up against a snow drift in front of our hotel. Does this count as pilot error?

CD PLAYER HU615: refused to eject cd's completely. I needed the tweezers in my swiss army knife to get them out. Once we got back to DC the problem disappeared.

HEATER: On the 7 hour drive from NJ to VT the heat would shut off and blow cold air like clockwork about every 30 minutes for 5 minutes. The only thing that would stop this was switching it onto full heat/red. This happened in both Auto and Normal modes and was also present on the return VT to DC trip.

Any thoughts on the above problems? Is there anything above that warrants an immediate trip to the dealer in the next two weeks. I am about 3k miles from my next oil change.
thanks in advance,
e

Well, the cold always brings out the worst in all our cars, and your is no differnt. However, this is too much trouble and is indicative of an underlying problem. A slightly harder shift would be one thing, but refusing to shift and then slamming means you have a sticking valve. A high mileage car I might undertsand, but not vritually brand new.

AWD is on all the time, and going into reverse does not stop it from funtioning. you are learning the hard way the way real mlimitations of this technology. I cannot tell you over the past weekend how many stuck AWD SUVs I passed, which just spun and spun, just like you excplained, even after they had been dug out most of the way. Of course, hard pakced snow or heavy sleet are absolutely the worse, but I think it shows that your tyres are really the key. I drove out of the 12 inches of hard sleet with a RWD 240 and snowtyres. I rokced it a little to get started and then just went. AWD is excellent for smaller amounts of snow or roads with some snow plow, giving yu incredible start up ttraciotn, but it isn;t 4WD.

I would seriously get the tranny checked out, and even mention its antics when it was stuck, and of course the heating suggests the climate control is having serious problems. If its under warranty ram them.

I would be most concerned about the shifting. Is it still doing what it did in VT? If so I would have that looked at immediately. I am not familiar the AWD or heating issues you were having but again should probably be looked at. The CD thing is probably a function of the severe cold we've been having. I live in upstate NY and my Volvo sometimes does weird things at -5 or so.

Allison and Wayne,
Thank you for your responses and thoughts. I will pass them along to my dealer. All problems seemed to have disappeared once we returned to the warmer climate of DC.