Winter isn’t a worry for motorists solely due to the challenge of navigating treacherous snow and black ice – it’s also a hazard to the very condition of a car, even when it isn’t being used.
Thankfully, the maintenance procedures for keeping your car in good condition during the winter aren’t drastically different to those for any other time of year.
All that it might take to keep your car in optimum condition during the winter is a couple of common sense measures and checks, so be sure to constantly bear the following advice in mind.
Drive your car regularly
Such is your car battery’s vulnerability to cold and damp weather that if you turn the key on a morning only to hear a mechanical groan, chances are that it has given up the ghost.
The threat of a flat battery is all the more reason for you to actually take your car out regularly during the winter, even if it’s just for a long run every one or two weeks.
Park it in suitable places
Your car is most likely to actually start on those cold, damp mornings if it is parked in a location away from the elements – in other words, in a warm, dry, undercover spot.
Failing that, some other sheltered spot – such as near a tall hedge – should at least minimise the amount of ice-scraping that you have to do each morning.
Keep an eye on the oil level
It might be the most traditional advice of all, but it continues to hold fast: guarding against sludgy or low levels of oil helps to keep your car’s engine efficient.
Drain and replace your oil or top it up to help preserve your car’s engine efficiency all through the winter.
Clean and maintain your car’s exterior…
Grit and other wintry dirt can easily get into your car’s nooks and crannies from the outside, posing the risk of corrosion or rust if your vehicle is not suitably deep cleaned.
…and the interior
It’s easy to forget just how much havoc the winter can wreak on the inside of your car as well – you and everyone else who climbs into and out of your car can drag in a lot of muck and grime.
So with that in mind, you should ensure that you routinely wipe down your car’s door sills, polish the dashboard and clean the inside of the windows on an at least weekly basis.
Refill the radiator
It’s important to keep your car’s radiator topped up at any time of year, but even more so during the colder months, when you should also be using antifreeze to prevent the liquid in the cooling system becoming ice.
Store some ready-mixed coolant in your car’s boot, so that you can easily refill the system when you need to.
Many of these steps may seem to be rather simple ones, but they are also easily forgotten by time-poor and stressed-out motorists during the harshest winters.
Click through to discover the wide range of Halfords voucher codes available in the UK that allow you to save big on all manner of winter motoring essentials, or browse elsewhere online for other relevant money off vouchers.
