I will soon be leaving my car for about a year. Are there any precautions/techniques I should employ to make sure nothing siezes or corrodes during that time? What should I do before restarting the thing once I’ve come back?
- Store it indoors if at all possible. Ideally you want someplace dry and critter free.
- Speaking of critters, clean it out really good. You don’t want it to attract critters while it sits. They can get in and do all sorts of damage. Plug up the air intake and exhaust while you are at it to prevent critters from getting in there as well.
- Hi Opal!
- Take the spark plugs out and put some oil in the cylinders, then crank the engine over a bit to make sure the oil coats everything inside. You don’t want to put a lot of oil in, just enough to coat the inside of the cylinders. Put the spark plugs back in when you are done.
- Remove the battery.
- Put the car on jack stands to avoid getting a flat spot on the tires.
- Pull the windshield wipers away from the window so they won’t get stuck and leave a mark.
Once you get back:
- change the oil
- put a fresh battery in it (or the old one if you somehow managed to have it trickle charged at a friend’s house or something while you were gone)
- undo all of the above (jack stands, windshield wipers, etc)
- Take out the spark plugs, put a little bit of oil in each cylinder, and crank the engine over just enough to get the cylinders all coated again. Obviously, put the spark plugs back in.
- Inpsect for critters that may have gotten past your safeguards.
- start 'er up.
Shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ve run cars that have sat for more than a year and did not need to drain and refill the gas tank. If it were going to sit for 2 years or more then I’d change the gas out as well.
The car may have a hard time starting when you get back, but I’ve done this with a few cars and after a few minutes of cranking they did turn over. It will probably run rough for a few minutes. You’ll probably have a bit of rust on the rotors and the brakes may tend to stick. Drive around the block a few times and hit the brakes pretty hard a couple of dozen times (note - go slow while you do this) and they should loosen up without much trouble. After a couple of days driving you’ll scrape the rust off of the rotors just from normal braking.
If the area you are storing the car in isn’t dry you may end up with rust damage to your exhaust system from water collecting in/on it. Under normal conditions this water would just burn off when you ran the car, but since the car is sitting it just sits and rusts.
Whoops, one last thing. Even though the car will run on year old gas, you’ll want to use that up and get fresh gas into it as soon as possible.
Nothing much to add, just want to mention a recent expierence. 12 years ago my dad put his 72 LTD into storage. Didn’t do anything to it, just backed it into the corner of a barn and walked away and didn’t think about it again for years. Just this summer we went and pulled it out of storage (actually for several reasons we DRAGGED it out with a tractor and chains about 100 feet in PARK so we could get it up on a flatbed). Anyways we changed the plugs and oil and someother odds and ends and got it started back up. I was amazed that it started on 12 year old gas. It did take about 6 hours and some starting fluid to get it going, but we got it. It acutally ran pretty well too, since then we did a ton of work on it and it’s been running great so far.
That’s all.
Store it with a full tank of fuel, with a fuel stabilizer treatment added.
Instead of pouring oil in your cylinders, you can buy a can of “fogging oil” from any auto store. Squirt that in to the spark plug holes, as per directions. Also, definitly buy a little bottle of Sta-Bil or some fuel stabilizer and pour the correct amount of that into your full tank of gas. Let the car run a few minutes with the stabilizer in the tank, to make sure it gets into the carb bowls, etc.
Good time to change the oil, too. Get the engine nice and warm, drain the current oil, and replace it with some inexpensive oil for storage. Then when you get back and take the car out of storage, warm the engine and replace the oil again. Probably not necessary, but it will definitely help get a lot of gunk outta there.
Why not sell it, instead of taking the additional year of depreciation without getting any use out of it? Put the money in a one-year CD. You can always purchase the same make and model and year a year later for less money and pocket the difference plus interest. Unless it’s a classic.
Thanks for all the advice. Not sure about suspending it - what would happen if I inflated the tires to a very high pressure? Would that delay the formation of flat spots? Or indeed if flat spots do develop, will they eventually get flexed out?
Nah, it’s a 2000 Ford Focus. Nothing special. This is an interesting idea. The only problem with selling it is that I haven’t cared for it cosmetically. It has quite a few dings and scratches that I really can’t be bothered to pay to get fixed, and the sale value would therefore be pretty low.