Unless you live in paradise, winter has the potential to be rough on your car. This means you’ll need to know how to winterize a car. Those of you who live where it never gets below freezing you’re lucky. You can stop reading now and go enjoy your weather. For the rest of us, who know how bad winter driving can be, here are some tips that can easily winterize your car.
Car Repairs
Many people put off car repairs for various reasons. Winter is when these repairs, become huge problems. Just because they could wait in the summer, they can’t wait in the winter. Before winter, get any and all repairs done on your car. Have check engine light fixed, leaks, or any repairs you’ve put off. This is the first step to winterize your car.
Maintenance
Once you have all your repairs done, you need to look at the maintenance that needs to be done. Every car has a schedule of maintenance items that need to be done. If you are close to the mileage on any of the big maintenance items get them done now. This is the next step on how to winterize a car. Make sure you at least get your 30K,60k,100K, or 120K maintenance done. This will help prevent a lot of breakdowns.
If you have been putting off maintenance for a while, getting it all done before winter with the added cost of repairs, may be cost-prohibitive. If you can’t afford all the maintenance, make sure you at least check your coolant and replace it if necessary. Bad antifreeze is going to cause you huge problems in the winter.
Coolant
The most important maintenance to winterize your car is having your coolant flushed. You definitely want to make sure you have good antifreeze.
Since antifreeze is at least 50% water it can freeze and it will expand when it does. This can lead to cracked radiators or engine blocks, which means lots of costly repairs.
If you’ve had your coolant changed in the past year, or within the mileage on your maintenance schedule. You still need to check your coolant level. It’s possible to lose some coolant in an engine without any leaks.
Any time you add coolant, make sure you use a 50/50 mix of antifreeze and water. Also, make sure you use the antifreeze specifically called for in your owner’s manual. Although a “universal” antifreeze will work in an emergency. It may not have all the additives your cooling system needs. Without these additives, various components of your cooling system can wear out prematurely, costing you lots of money in repairs.
Air Filter
Just like your home furnace needs to have the air filter changed, so does your car. The engine air filter should at least be checked before winter to make sure that you can still see light through it. If not replace it.
Cabin Air Filter
Your cabin air filter needs to be changed just like your engine air filter. However, they are not as easy to get to. So if you are going to spend the time to check it you might as well plan to replace it. The filter itself isn’t that expensive, it’s normally the labor to change it, that costs the most money.
Read your owner manual and do it yourself. Most of them just require you to remove your glove box to get to them. It’s really a matter of labor as to the cost of replacement. Check a few YouTube videos to see if you want to tackle replacing it yourself.
Replace Wiper Blades/ Fill Washer Fluid
Put new wiper blades on your car before winter. Wiper blades go bad even without use, and there’s nothing worse than a streaky windshield in the winter. Along with wiper blades, make sure you’ve put a good winter-blend washer fluid in your car. The last thing you need is frozen washer fluid when you need it the most.
Have Your Battery Checked
Winter can be cold and hard on a car battery. The last thing you want is your car not starting in sub-zero temperatures. Of course you have jumper cables in your car, but jumping a car in the cold still ruins your day. Which means you should have your battery checked before it leaves you stranded in the cold.
Many shops use a machine that just checks the capacitance of your battery. While knowing the Cold Cranking Amps of your battery is good to know, it’s not always a true indication of the condition of your battery.
When having your battery checked it’s best if the mechanic load tests your battery with a carbon pile tester. This will give you the best results as to the condition of your battery.
Change Fuel Filter?
Fuel filters are important to change once a year. Although many newer cars don’t have a replaceable fuel filter as they are only in the gas tank. For those cars that have fuel filters. Changing your fuel filter is cheap insurance to make sure nothing is getting into your fuel injectors or engine.
Check Your Tires
As the temperatures outside get cooler you, of course, need to check your tire pressures. We all know that cold air reduces the air pressure in your tires. However, before the weather gets too cold you also need to make sure you have good tread on your tires. This is a really important step to winterize your car.
If your tires have marginal tread left, you need to replace them. Most tires start out with at least 10/32″ of tread depth. Depending on who you talk to 5/32″ is either bald or close to end of life.
This means going into winter you want more than 5/32″ tread depth on your tires. The closer your tires are to 5/32″ or less, the more important is for you to buy new tires.
Always replace your tires in sets of 2, with all 4 at once being the best. Of course, if you own an AWD vehicle you must buy all 4 tires. With AWD vehicles, if all 4 tires don’t have the same outer diameter, you can do serious damage to the drive train.
All Season Tires
When buying new tires, all-season tires are the best deal. Though snow tires will give you better traction on ice and snow. The problem is you can’t use snow tires all year-long. Snow tires wear out very fast in the summer. With summer only or performance tires there is almost no traction on snow and ice.
Snow Tires
If you live where snow tires are a must. There are two kinds of snow tires you can buy. You can buy tires designed to be studded, and those that are called studless.
Studless snow tires are the recommended way to go. Since many states and counties have laws dealing with when and if you can run studded tires. Also if you have the money it’s recommended that you buy a second set of rims to go with your snow tires. This gives you the option of changing them out yourself if you have an unexpected snowfall. Not to mention taking tires on and off rims multiple times a year can be hard on the tire, and costly for you.
Local VS Online Purchases of Tires
There are tons of places you can buy new tires. The big question is do you buy your tires online or go to a local shop?
With online tire sales, you always seem to get a better deal on name brand and off-brand tires. Many times the prices they list per tire are $10-$50 cheaper than your local shop. The problem is the price doesn’t include shipping into the price till checkout. They also don’t explain, you still have to pay someone to mount and balance your tires. If you have the equipment to mount and balance a tire please buy your tires online. Even with shipping, you’ll save money.
Most tire shops will mount and balance the tires your buy from them for no additional charge. This makes the price of tires bought for a shop versus buying online normally with a few dollars price of each other.
Tire Rotation
If you aren’t replacing your tires for the winter, consider having them rotated. This will help even out your tread wear on all four tires. It can also give you a slightly better tread on your drive tires. The drive tires being front for FWD or rear for RWD usually wearing slightly faster then non-drive tires.
Conclusion
When considering how to winterize a car you start with getting all the necessary repairs done. Then you want to make sure you have good tires. Once repairs and tires are under control. Get as much of the scheduled maintenance done. Concentrating on the coolant. air filters, cabin air filters, and fuel filters. All while never forgetting to check the condition of your car battery.