There are many instances when you need to securely store your car for several months – you can go on a long vacation, business trip, or have another reason to stop driving for a limited period of time. If you simply park your car in the garage or in the nearby parking lot, you risk dealing with flat tyres, dead car battery, damage from weather, or even deliberate damage from passersby after a couple of months. Find out the right way to store your car!
Wash and wax your car
One of the most common problems with long-term car storage is the corrosion and rust, which are much more likely to occur if you haven’t washed the car and protected its exterior before leaving it for several months. That is why you need to start with a thorough exterior wash, followed by quality waxing. Make sure that even the tiniest areas of the car don’t go unattended. When the exterior is properly washed and waxed, you can move on to the interior – normally it needs vacuuming and a wet wash of plastic parts and windows.
Check the fluids and filters
Old oils and fluids that have been sitting in the car for years tend to turn acidic, which can seriously harm your engine and other sensitive mechanisms of the vehicle. For this reason, make sure to drain and clean all liquid and oil compartments, clean them, and top off the reservoirs again with high quality liquids. It’s important to top off the reservoirs, so that there is no free space above the fluids, which can lead to condensation. Dirty filters can also damage your car’s mechanics, and if it’s been a while since you’ve replaced your oil, air, and fuel filters, now is the right time to do it.
Take care of the battery
Older cars drain the battery even when they’re not working, which means that unless you want your expensive car battery to become unusable in a few months due to a deteriorated inner cell, remember to disconnect the battery completely before parking the vehicle for a long period of time. As for newer vehicles, which require a constant source of power, you can get a trickle charger and connect it to the battery, so that the car’s computer doesn’t break down due to the lack of power.
Fill your car
When you’re leaving your car for several months, it can be very tempting to use every last drop of fuel or to pour the fuel to another vehicle and use it. However, an empty or half-empty fuel tank is prone to condensation, which is very damaging for various materials and can cause the fuel tank and other vehicle parts to deteriorate. This is why your car should be filled up before storage. It’s also a good idea to add fuel stabilizer to the mixture, which will keep the fuel in its original condition and prevent it from evaporating.
