Caring for your car in lockdown

TonyM

TonyM

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Many of us might be leaving our cars unused for longer than normal whilst we are on lockdown. My local workshop posted an article on how to keep our cars in good shape during this time, which I thought was worth sharing.

10 Tips to Store Your Car Properly

I'm not a car expert by any means, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of this information. It seems to me that driving a car around the block for 5 minutes once in a while (if permitted during lockdown) might be enough to avoid some of these problems?

Does anyone else have any better advice?

This thread is about looking after your car. Any discussion about COVID-19 should be in this thread
 
I'll get plenty of time to test parking mode on my dashcams
 
I think it is the standard list for storing a classic sports car over winter, in UK there are a lot of cars only insured and driven 6 months of the year.

The handbrake one is good advice in general, not just when stored, as long as you are parked somewhere suitable. So if the car is parked in a flat garage, just leave it in 1st gear, no handbrake every time.

For the lockdown, yes, a drive around the block once a week, and maybe a 5 minute idle to charge the battery and reach full temperature would be plenty, it will move the tyres off their flatspot, oil the pistons, spread the fuel around the fuel tank, exercise the brakes - everything covered.
 
Nigel said:
The handbrake one is good advice in general, not just when stored, as long as you are parked somewhere suitable. So if the car is parked in a flat garage, just leave it in 1st gear, no handbrake every time.
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My brakes stick after just 2 or 3 days, so the handbrake suggestion seems good to me. My driveway slopes down towards the road so I'll need to use some bricks under the wheels. Not sure how secure the car is on a slope when parked in gear.
 
TonyM said:
I'm not a car expert by any means, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of this information. It seems to me that driving a car around the block for 5 minutes once in a while (if permitted during lockdown) might be enough to avoid some of these problems?
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Running a vehicle for only five minutes can damage your muffler and catalytic converter due to condensate that forms after you start the car because during the warming up of the engine the high temperature difference between the heated state of the system and the ambient temperature will create moisture. The moisture interacts with acids in the exhaust and leads to rust and corrosion. I was thinking about this just the other day when we got a foot of snow from a late winter storm and I needed to move my truck so I could have the driveway plowed. As it happens I just replaced the muffler on my vehicle just over two weeks ago and so this phenomenon was definitely on my mind. I will literally see water dripping out of my exhaust pipe during the first 10 minutes or so when I start it up on a cold day, and often even on a not so cold day. So, I left my truck running until the exhaust pipe was hot and dry. Usually the advice is to drive a minimum of five miles after you start a vehicle.
 
TonyM said:
My brakes stick after just 2 or 3 days, so the handbrake suggestion seems good to me. My driveway slopes down towards the road so I'll need to use some bricks under the wheels. Not sure how secure the car is on a slope when parked in gear.
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Normally 1st gear will hold the car on a decent slop, but don't take any risks, just because it is not moving when you leave it doesn't mean that the engine valves won't leak a little over time allowing the engine to turn very slowly. In my garage I have a strip of rubber across the floor, once the wheels are over it I know that I am far enough in to close the door and also that it won't roll out again, so I don't need either brakes or gears. A shallow trench across the drive would do the same.

If you are not sure, leave the steering turned into a curb with the steering lock on, then if it rolls forward it won't go very far. (And make sure anyone else that might drive it knows how to turn a steering lock off - many don't!)
 
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A Ctek battery charger is good to have at times like these too just to ensure its topped up.

Depending on battery type it has reconditioning modes too although these don't always work if the battery is FUBAR.

Sent from my VOG-L09 using Tapatalk
 
I still drive the same amount as i always have, but that's still not a lot compared to normal working people with a family.
I have no option to trickle charge my car as there are no power outlets in the back yard, so i would have to take the battery up to my 2 floor apartment, but that i wouldn't even ask of my worst enemy.
 
Dashmellow said:
Usually the advice is to drive a minimum of five miles after you start a vehicle.
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That's the 'rule of thumb' every mechanic I've talked to goes by. Ideally you want both the exhaust system and oil to get up to operating temperature to evaporate any water, as well as any gas (petrol) that's managed to get by the piston rings and/or valves into the oil causing dilution. One of my vehicles has an oil temp gauge and in colder weather it takes at least 5 miles to get into normal operating range.
 
DT MI said:
That's the 'rule of thumb' every mechanic I've talked to goes by. Ideally you want both the exhaust system and oil to get up to operating temperature to evaporate any water, as well as any gas (petrol) that's managed to get by the piston rings and/or valves into the oil causing dilution. One of my vehicles has an oil temp gauge and in colder weather it takes at least 5 miles to get into normal operating range.
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Yeah, I guess I first heard that advice from a mechanic too now that I think about it. All good common sense advice regarding the engine and fluid temps along with getting the exhaust system hot enough for long enough to dry it out.
 
It is funny some times stopped behind another car you can see fluid dripping off the tail pipe, often at a pretty high rate.

In the 90ties i put a stainless exhaust system on my Opel kaddet GT ( actually did this curbside at my riends house during a snow storm ) within 6 years or so it had rusted over.
Though i did some times do fairly short drives like barely 2 miles, but with my driving style of the day everything was toasty when i arrived, often the brakes barely worked as they was that hot.
And i only used the brakes like 6 times on those short drives.

What a fracking idiot i was back then :rolleyes:
 
The oil doesn't need to get very warm to evaporate any water, but normally in a modern engine the water is trapped inside the engine anyway due to emissions regulations. If you remove the oil filler cap while the engine is warm, any water will come out as steam, when there is no steam then the oil is fine.

The catalytic converter should be OK, they are all made of stainless steel here, so don't rust, although it is the sort of stainless steel that has a surface coat of iron oxide, so they never look like shiny stainless steel. If the rest of the exhaust is mild steel then it will rust, like the brake disks you need to get it properly hot occasionally to dry out the metal to avoid the surface becoming pitted, after which it can deteriorate fairly quickly.

kamkar1 said:
It is funny some times stopped behind another car you can see fluid dripping off the tail pipe, often at a pretty high rate.
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13% of the contents of the exhaust is water vapour, from burning hydrocarbons with oxygen, if it condenses before it exits then it comes out as steam or dripping water, tends to happen more often on longer vehicles, or those with wider pipes, where it has more time to condense.
 
While my car's not being used, I suppose now is a good time to be checking all my dashcam power supplies, cable routes, clean the lenses, reformat the cards etc.

I also have a couple of potential longer-term projects involving telephoto and wide-angle lenses that I could make a start on.
 
TonyM said:
While my car's not being used, I suppose now is a good time to be checking all my dashcam power supplies, cable routes, clean the lenses, reformat the cards etc.

I also have a couple of potential longer-term projects involving telephoto and wide-angle lenses that I could make a start on.
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With several Mobius cams in my vehicle I've been going out to my truck a couple of times a week to charge up the supercaps so that I don't lose the time and date. I turn on the ignition switch to power up the ACC circuit for about 60 seconds but I don't start the engine. I've been hunkered down up here up on my mountain for two weeks now but today I have to make a trip into town so my truck will get a much needed workout.

I wonder what it will be like in town as each day our Governor locks down something new in an attempt to keep our COVID transmission numbers as low as possible. Today it was announced that all big box stores in the state such as Walmart are restricted from selling anything except essential products like food, medicines, cleaning supplies, etc. We had a spike in the last two days and now Vermont has 321 confirmed cases and 16 deaths.The county I live in, an area of 798 square miles has 16 documented COVID-19 cases and so far zero fatalities.
 
I have to take my chance with family tomorrow, my nephew are renovating his apartment ( and getting paid to do that ) but he need uncles geek powers for some electrical stuff.
And then his mother living at the same address but 2 floors down from the nephew will cook a meal for her nice big brother.

The nephew get his certification as a skilled mason this summer, i think i will go and video his exam build, as his grandfather who use to be one of the people grading the apprentices skills have too bad health to be there.
I am thinking maybe record it time lapse, so the old man can see what the kid can do, and spice it up with some good dslr pictures.

I am sure when i mention my fathers name i will get a card blanche to do what i like.

TL of Danish masons at their final exam in 2017.
 
hehe i remember my Opel in the 90ties, it too had a parasitic drain somewhere, so if it sat idle for a few days i had to push start it 1 man ( dident have a charger )
And push start it meant push it a few 100 M down a street until there was a downhill side street, then give it a good old push there and jump in.

The Opel was a piece of cake, it was worse with my first car the Volvo 121 from 67, a all together other weight class, and still i managed one evening/ night to push it 200 M on streets with 20-25 CM of wet snow with a track made by other cars.
I think that was pretty well done for a 55KG skeleton in a skin sack guy.
 
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A lot of modern cars, especially the stub-nosed, tend to have tiny batteries installed, these are only just meaty enough to turn the engine a few times but if the car is left standing for a week or two, these batteries can rapidly die due to all the fancy electronics. The battery in my 1.9 turbo diesel was exactly the same as in my youngest's 1.2 petrol!
The modern recommended battery was almost double the figures (ampage & cold crank amps) - I went a different route, removing the crappy plastic shield, I measured the footprint in the battery tray then looked on a battery supplier's site to pick up the meatiest battery I could find that would fit into the space allowed, it's all so much the better for it. I keep it topped off with the output from a half decent solar panel - as I always reverse into my driveway, the rear window is south facing so gets plenty of direct sunshine.
 
TonyM said:
I just went to move my car. It's going nowhere with a battery at 9.9V! I suppose I need to buy a battery charger?

It's a fairly new battery, only one year since it was replaced after this happened : https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/flat-battery-warning.38534/
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A simple way out of your predicament is to utilise a battery off a cordless tool. I have a bunch of Makita cordless stuff, takes a 14.4v battery & I always have a few around (so, one on each tool plus 3 or 4 spares fresh off the charger), it's easy to jury-rig one of these to jump start your car.
 
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