De-Icer cans shelf life ?

[Victor Gi4LKG]

Do de-icer aerosol spray cans have a shelf life/sell by date ?

I have 2 CarPlan cans in the garage since last winter but not sure about using them now.

Regards Victor

[Nigel Molesworth]

Only if you are going to drink it. Try it, if it works, use it.

[Andrew Gabriel]

The deicer part won't go off. If the cans start corroding, either the propellent or all of the contents will have leaked out, making them useless. Personally I don't use the stuff -- a scraper and heated windscreen seem to work very well. YMMV.

If you have a newish car (a couple of years) which will have been painted with water based paint, you might want to check the car manufacturer's instructions very carefully. Squashed flies seem to dissolve this paint, so I would be very careful about the spec of deicers and windscreen washer anti-freeze used, although I don't know if there are any potential problems here.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Water based paint is much older than that - some German cars have been using it for well over 10 years.

I had a leak from the intensive wash reservoir on my BMW. So neat genuine BMW fluid leaked over the paint on the inner wing. And took it off down to the steel... For some reason the inner wing only has the base coat of the metallic paint. Dunno if the lacquer would have prevented this.