I have a 2007 Acura that I don’t use too much, but I’d like to keep it running for at least another year. Runs fine.
How often do I need to take it for a ride and how far should I go to keep the tires round, the engine lubricated, and the battery in shape?
Long enough to get the engine up to it’s normal operating temperature and then maybe another 20 minutes. Call it a half hour from the time you start it. The idea is you need to get the engine and exhaust hot enough, and for long enough to A)evaporate any moisture in the oil and B)evaporate any water vapor that condensed on the cold exhaust system when you first started it.
I imagine that’ll be plenty of time to keep the battery charged as well. However, you might want to look into a battery maintainer. They’re not that expensive and they keep it charged and ready to go.
As for keeping the engine lubricated, that should happen more or less right away.
That’s a great answer on “how much?” That’s also enough driving to grind the surface rust off the brake rotors so you don’t grow deep pits.
As to “how often?”
Depends a bit on where you live; you haven’t supplied your location in your profile.
Ballpark monthly-ish. If you live in severely cold country and it parks outside, probably more like 3 weeks. That’s assuming you don’t have the battery on a maintainer. If you do, then, warm or cold every 2 months is enough.
Note that in really cold snowy conditions, simply driving around town may not be enough to charge the battery net of low speeds, low RPMs, heater/defroster on high, headlights on, rear window defog wires on, wipers going, etc., no matter how long you doodle around town.
In that worst case you may need 30 minutes on the highway (still at sorta reduced speed) to fully heat and charge the battery despite the high electrical loads.
I live in Northern NJ and the car lives outside. Our winters are usually not too bad.
I looked at the first owner’s manual I saw for a 2007 Honda, and as part of storing the vehicle, it says:
If possible, periodically run the engine until it reaches full operating temperature (the cooling fan cycles twice). Preferably, do this once a month
Regarding the tires, it mentions putting the car up on jackstands. But, IMO, that seems like a lot of extra work. You might want to park it on cardboard though. No idea if it helps, but I’ve heard it mentioned to slow down dryrot from the tires being in contact with concrete.
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I am not a mechanic, but I do recall callers asking this exact question on Car Talk back when that was still on the air. And I recall Click and Clack saying that the majority of the wear on an engine happens when you first start it up – at that point the oil isn’t flowing yet, the condensation in the oil hasn’t evaporated yet. So frequently starting it up, driving a short distance, and shutting it off is really hard on a car (So contrary to popular belief, that little old lady who only uses her car to drive to church once a week is actually being really hard on her car, unless church is really far away). As @Joey_P already said, you want to drive it long enough to get the engine warmed up, at least.
I hate that a 2007 is an old car.
I’d drive it for at least 30 minutes, at minimum once every 2-4 weeks. That should keep everything working smoothly.
I don’t know if the gasoline going bad is an issue or not if you leave the same gas in the tank for more than 6 months.
Old enough to vote, but not drink.
Thanks everyone! I’ll take it for a good spin every 2-4 weeks if I don’t end up using it for something in between.
Are you lamenting the general passage of time, or that cars don’t last e.g. 50 years, or that the 18 years since 2007 have seen vast improvements in every aspect of cars?
A couple days ago I was leaving a restaurant and passed a table of young people, one of whom had a birthday tiara on. I stopped to wish her happy birthday and found out she was turning 21. Sooo excited about her bright shiny future.
It bothered me a bit as I was walking away that it was hard for me, from my great remove across the decades, to see her as more than a child. Where did the time go and how the hell did I turn into an older guy along the way??
@Joey_P and @LSLGuy pretty much nailed it. Highway speeds, for about 10 minutes about every month or two should do it. The higher, sustained engine revs will have the alternator restoring the battery voltage nicely.
My grandparents gave me that car when they bought a new one, and at a fairly young ago, it had a major enough engine failure that i dumped it. The mechanic who diagnosed the problem thought that “wasn’t driven at speed” was the cause of the damage.
I shudder to think of the pieces of shit US automakers would be putting out if, back when, an isolationist president had curtailed the importation of Japanese cars.
I don’t believe this is what the OP was asking about, but you can take different steps to winterize a fair weather driver - including putting it up on jackstands.
For the OP, one fallacy some folk fall into is thinking they can just start the car and let it idle for a few minutes. When you go out every few weeks, try to hit a few hills and hit an expressway for at least a couple of exits.
My late brother had to explain this to mother during the lockdown — that was my own routine at the time, take off every weekend going an hour or two between freeways and rural roads taking advantage of the light traffic.
Around here (SE Louisiana, no real winter from a northern perspective), a car battery can drain down in less than a week if the car is left sitting. Is that climate-related?
I believe that rubber parts including tires, various tubing, flexible boots, little bumpers, etc etc are inclined to crack because of exposure to ozone. Keeping the car protected from ozone would help that. I think activated carbon, avoidance of ultraviolet light, and indoor storage all help with that. I think there are protective sprays that also help with that.
Salt is death on a car, and rinsing it off is a big help.
There are protective liquids for metals generally, especially steel and iron. One highly recommended from the world of tractors and farm equipment is “Fluid Film”, available in spray cans and large quantity cans, and I use it on all sorts of things to prevent rust (I have no promotional interest). It’s wool wax, which is the oil extracted from wool, and chemically it’s mostly lanolin. It doesn’t interfere with operation, just corrosion.
There are “vapor capsules” you can buy that claim to emit a vapor fighting corrosion. They’re for putting in spaces in machines that you want to protect. They look sort of like chalkboard erasers and seem to have maybe foam rubber that was infused with something. I’ve used them for example out in the barn on some woodworking equipment that lives under tarps and gets used less than monthly. But, I haven’t done any experiments that prove they work. It seems plausible, though, because I’ve also stored plastic jugs of hydrochloric acid on shelves, and seen other things near them (including above them) develop fine rust and worse, as though the jugs emit a cloud of corrosion – if some vapors can encourage rust, why couldn’t others discourage it?
Not likely. I suspect you may have a slight trickle voltage drain. Recommend you go to a battery shop and they should be able to test your system for free to see if that is the case. Call ahead to check that they’ll do that for free.
This makes me wonder. I’ve occasionally seen stories about car collectors, such as Jerry Seinfeld, who owns dozens of cars. Does he have an employee whose job it is to drive each car around for X miles/minutes in rotation to keep them healthy?
I don’t know about Seinfeld, but IIRC Jay Leno does does employ a couple of mechanics whose job is to care for his collection. I don’t know if driving the cars around is part of their job, though. But from what I understand Jay actually drives his cars himself quite frequently, so that might be enough.