How to Store Your Vehicle Over the Winter Months

If you’re storing your vehicle and not driving it over the winter, you will want to take a few steps to prepare your car for storage. Here are a few tips to make sure your vehicle is ready to go again when you take it out of storage.

Clean and Detail

You don’t want to put a car into storage without cleaning it first. Clean the inside of the vehicle, removing all garbage and vacuuming the floor and upholstery. Wash the outside, and follow up with wax to protect the paint finish.

Prevent Mice and Rodent Damage

If mice or other rodents get into your vehicle while it’s stored they can cause serious damage. While there is no way to guarantee they won’t try to get warm inside the vehicle, you can take a few steps to help make your vehicle less appealing for them. Put mothballs inside old socks and then place the socks inside the vehicle, under the hood, and under the car. If you don’t want to use mothballs, you can also put drier sheets inside your vehicle.

Inflate Your Tires

Tires will lose air while in storage during the cold winter months and you don’t want your tires to deflate and leave your car sitting on its rims. Ideally you would take the tires off and store your vehicle on a lift to keep the pressure off the tires, but if that is not possible be sure to inflate your tires to the maximum tire air pressure before storing, and to check and fill tires as necessary before driving car out of storage.

Remove Battery

Remove and store your battery separate from your vehicle so it doesn’t drain the power over the winter. Alternatively, you can connect the battery to a trickle charger or battery tenders. The charger you use should have an automatic shutoff feature or float mode so it stops charging when it has full power to avoid overcharging the battery.

 

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