Winterizing Your Vehicle
Kenny Coogan: [00:00:00] What do you do before you store a vehicle for winter, and before we started this podcast, I had mentioned I just came back from Halifax and I visited the Steel Wheels motor museum and Halifax, Nova Scotia, and they had a sign that said one in 5 people, 20 percent of the population has never washed their vehicle.
Wow.
Mark Mederski: With all the car washes around, I think it’s going to be a little better ratio than that. I like to say before you store a vehicle, do a full service on it. So your point, wash it, vac out the interior, wipe off the dashboard. You don’t need to use any material on that. Just dust it and vac it out. And actually an oil change. If you’re going to store the vehicle and oil change is a good thing to do. Make sure your tire pressure’s up and check that through the off season if you have a low tire some tires, especially high performance tires will flat [00:01:00] spot and it may take a while in the spring for the tire to get around again, or it may be even permanently damaged.
It’s a bonding thing, you’ve got to, you got to tell that vehicle that you love it and and then maybe when you go out in the spring, that battery that you’ve charged every three weeks or so, it’s ready for you
Introduction
Josh Wilder: Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. At Mother Earth News, for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources in this podcast. We host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.
Kenny Coogan: Good day, everyone. I’m Kenny Coogan and joining me on this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends is Mark Mederski. He is the editor in chief of Motorcycle Classics Magazine. Over the [00:02:00] years, Mark has worked for several museums, including two motorcycle museums.
He’s also a collector of old bikes and has about 30 motorcycles. He does a restoration every few years and enjoys sports cars as well. Today we’ll be talking about winterizing your vehicles. Welcome to the podcast, Mark.
Mark Mederski: Good morning, Kenny. How’s it going, man?
Kenny Coogan: Doing great. And now I’m in Tampa, Florida. The weather is just starting to feel nice outside, but Mark, where do you live? That makes you an authority on winterizing your vehicles.
Mark Mederski: I’m in central Ohio and I think I would say the weather changes in central Ohio or a lot of the, a lot of the problem there. The temperatures, in the winter, it’ll go down to on average, 20-30 degrees.
Maybe we’ll get a 50 degree day in the summer, 75 to 95. And one of the key pieces is [00:03:00] condensation you get from temperature change and when moisture sits on a metal surface, especially if it’s unpainted. Imagine a mower blade or a shaft or something like that. It promotes corrosion.
Main winter storage problems of machines and vehicles
Kenny Coogan: And when we think about winter and vehicles, what are some of the main offenders of stored machines?
Mark Mederski: Number one, if your machine uses a wet cell battery, a lead acid battery you need to take care of that properly. The best shot there is to maintain a charge and there are various kind of battery maintenance devices you can use.
If you’re good to your equipment, it can help if you charge that battery every three weeks. I’m a little fearful of consistent, all through the winter battery maintenance machine, but go out and charge it every few weeks. And then the other piece is a fuel system. That’s probably the worst offender. You can really get into problems there, especially whether our new fuels with alcohol in them. What I prefer to [00:04:00] do again, a little tedious, but you can pull the fuel line, if you have a fuel line connected in the fuel tank to the carburetor of the machine, remove the fuel line and start the engine. And run it until it is out of gas. There’s fuel sitting in the float bowl normally. And if you run the engine until it’s out of gas, you’ll remove the fuel that’s in there that can gum up the jets and small passageways. And then in the spring, you reconnect the fuel line and turn on the fuel and you’ll have a fresh charge of fuel in that carburetor.
The fuel in the carburetor, the battery are two big things. The other piece of it is just general corrosion problems. You’ll see moisture accumulate with temperature changes. This is assuming you have the vehicle or the mower or whatever it is in a barn or a garage those temperature changes and the [00:05:00] condensation will even corrode zinc plating. It’s a good idea to keep the machine at a constant temperature. Put a cover over it that will breathe just an old bedsheet a cotton bedsheet is good. A piece of polyethylene plastic is probably not good. And another piece, which we don’t usually think about these little beasties, but if you do get field mice or God forbid chipmunks or squirrels into your storage area, they can really wreak havoc. They can chew on wires. A lot of modern wires the installation is made from soy based plastic. And they like to munch on that and wire harness with no insulation is a very dangerous thing. So keeping the vermin away there’s urine and feces and and maybe a baby mouse nest could grow, in a cavity somewhere in your machine. So that’s a bad thing. So if your doors are sealed [00:06:00] whatever way you can do that constant temperatures those are helpful things.
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Kenny Coogan: We’re talking about winterizing your vehicles and you just gave us a lot of a lot of scenarios that could happen to our stored machines. Now, when you were giving us that list, are you thinking of old cars and old bikes that you only want to take out on nice weather or are you also talking about like tractors because I’m thinking like a snow plow. [00:07:00] And just like your normal car, you’re going to have access to throughout the winter.
Mark Mederski: If you’re in the northern climates, up in Minnesota or something like that you’re going to need to keep access to that plowing tractor or four wheel drive pickup. So those are probably okay. Frequent use is always a good thing. A lot of people say, don’t store your your old car, motorcycle, or lawnmower, operate it, because the longer it sits seals dry up, fuel systems go bad electrical and all that. Keeping your eye on it and using it a lot is good.
But if it’s off season and that nice 65 Chevy convertible has to sit in the garage while there’s salt brine thrown down on the roads, that’s when you got to pay attention to these things. There, there are some devices I’ve heard of that make sounds that annoy rodents. And keep them out of your storage space. My old boss John Parham used to use those in some of his barns. I’m not sure [00:08:00] how effective they are, but yeah, seasonality is a tough thing whether it’s a, recreational vehicle or something that you just got to use, for example your idea of a snow plow.
Preventing salt problems on winter vehicles
Kenny Coogan: Now, you also mentioned salt just now, and Mark, I don’t know if you know this, but I’m from Buffalo, New York, and I moved to Florida 12 years ago, and I still have my 14- 15 year old car. And how do we prevent that salt on those northern vehicles?
Mark Mederski: That is really tough. I refer to myself as a salt phobic. I ride none of my motorcycles once they put salt down the roads and none of my good cars. My poor old Honda Odyssey bears the brunt of of salt, but it’s really tough. If you can go to the so called quarter car wash with your car and spray it down hit the suspension components underside of the transmission and all those things.
I’m not really [00:09:00] sure if you can even get into the areas that will eventually become rust through, the ugly areas, your fender arches and things like that it seems like almost every pickup truck manufactured has naturally designed in cavities above the rear wheel arches that collect stuff if you’re real aggressive there and maybe can spray up in there pull your fender liners every few years and clean it out in there. Maybe throw on a coat of a rust preventative material. That’s always good. We’re a busy society and it can be difficult. But getting the salt off as soon as possible is good. And cleaning out cavities that might hold corrosive materials.
Where to store vehicles in the winter
Kenny Coogan: So we want to protect our vehicles in the winter. And you mentioned hopefully you could put them in a barn or a temperature stable area is undercover. The next best option if you don’t have a garage or a barn.
Mark Mederski: If you’re in a snowy [00:10:00] climate, snow accumulation is a freeze-thaw situation. You’re around your windshield wipers on a car. You can get a, an ice buildup in there. Some of the drains at the car can get plugged up. Sunroofs and things like that can be problematic. Be real careful if your car is sitting out not undercover, you gotta be careful with your door handles. If the door freezes and you’re aggressive on that door handle, you could even snap it off. Ideally you’ve got a carport or, park the vehicle up against the building maybe so that the the drifts are going the other direction and you’re not getting a lot of snow buildup on the car or truck.
What to do before you store a vehicle for winter
Kenny Coogan: I want to go back to storing your vehicles. You mentioned we want like a steady temperature, probably insulated, small garage. How important is a dehumidifier?
Mark Mederski: A dehumidifier, is a luxury, but if you can set that up, that’s [00:11:00] good. The ones that auto drain one way or another would be ideal, so you don’t have to go out there and Make sure that it’s not full and has shut down.
But if you have a pretty well sealed up garage. In other words, the temperature changes. The fluctuations are slow. An open frame garage with deciding on it could run down to, in the winter where I live, it could go down to 25 or 30 degrees and up to 60 or 70 during the day.
And that’s what’s really bad. A dehumidifier in that setting would be good. But while you’re almost beginning to dehumidify, you’re, Your block that you live on, because if you live in a porous garage. You’re dehumidifying more than just the air that’s in that room.
Wrapping vehicles for winter
Kenny Coogan: And I think you mentioned about covering your vehicles, why do people fully wrap their vehicles sometime? And then why do we want to have it open underneath?
Mark Mederski: I think you see boats are a good example. [00:12:00] That seems to be a really well practiced shrink wrap a setup. That’s an example of a machine that in a lot of climates is just flat put away. I have friends on a lake in Ohio. And, they call it quits maybe in mid October and the boat is stored down the road and they wrap it and then all of our discussion about vermin insects, spiders, whatever getting in there are taken care of with that wrap set up.
So you could do that, but I do not know exactly what’s going on under there as far as condensation. Boats are made to be wet. Some boats are even made to be in salt climates, like I’m on Cape Cod this week, and they’ve got water or humidity and salt in the air, but if you did totally wrap up vehicle like put it in a bag.
There are companies that sell bags. You can drive your car motorcycle into that would solve [00:13:00] some problems, but I’d still want in a constant temperature. I’d still fear condensation inside that bag.
How do you corrosion proof different vehicles?
Kenny Coogan: How do you corrosion proof different vehicles?
Mark Mederski: It depends on the surface that you’re working on, but ideally you keep the paint clean collection of any kind of road, grime and dirt if you think about all the brake rotors and pads and tires that are constantly wearing. You wonder where in the universe it’s collecting, but some of that is collecting on the surface of your car. So there’s actually iron oxide particles and whatever’s in modern brake pads sitting on your car. So if you’re gonna store it, as we discussed earlier, wash it and wax it, and then you’ve got most of that material off it’s it’s pretty tough though.
The, engine compartment, not a bad idea to go in there with probably a spray lubricant with a little wand on it and [00:14:00] shoot some of the linkages that you can see. Battery terminals there are, greases and such for those to again, corrosion proof them. Door hinges on your trunk, your hatch your two or four doors hood hinges and such like that.
If you can get into those joints shoot a little bit of oil on them and that, that makes everything a little better in the spring too.
Why do fuel systems cause the most problems
Kenny Coogan: You say that fuel systems cause the most problems. Why is that? And how can we prevent that?
Mark Mederski: The gasoline it’s best, If it’s changed out, like normally, people are driving about 15,000 miles a year. So 1200 miles a month or something like that’s really good. You’re always getting a, a fresh charge of fuel in there. Modern fuels are unstable. A lot of the components in them evaporate or just flat change, over time sitting in your fuel tank. So getting that out of the carburetor, given [00:15:00] again, that it is a carburetor machine. There are, most road vehicles are fuel injected now. But getting that fuel out of there so it doesn’t go through its changes while it’s in those tiny jets and passageways. That’s a good thing. Some Fuel tanks are plastic for the most part. Those have been designed with the thought of the chemistry in modern fuels, not attacking them, but back when they used fiberglass fuel tanks on some vehicles, motorcycles, especially now, if you still had a gallon of 1970 high test, it wouldn’t attack the fiberglass.
But now with the additives that are in modern fuels To make the emissions more friendly, burn cleaner, those will attack fiberglass and destroy it.
Kenny Coogan: I’m in Florida and I bought a trash pump and 200 feet of three inch hose. Just in case we have a hurricane situation, and [00:16:00] I’m only using the trash pump every few years because when I needed it, nobody was able to get me one because they were all rented for the entire state. So I said I better buy my own. So , hypothetically, I’m only using this once a year or once every few years in the month of August, and you mentioned I should drain it, but would it be better for me to run it empty to get all of the gasoline out of it?
Mark Mederski: So that’s a water pump essentially. And so you’re in the same kind of a situation as a person who might buy a generator in case of a power outage, right? There, I would say you’re probably better to cycle it. Go out there and run it every month. And same with a generator, frankly, run it every month. But a caution on that. I just had a conversation with my oldest motorhead buddy. And he said, if you don’t run your [00:17:00] generator or in this case Kenny, your pump long enough, like as in 20 minutes, 30 minutes, so that you fully heat the engine and the exhaust system on it, the muffler and all that. If you started it, got it hot and shut it off, you’re going to get condensation in the crankcase lubricant and probably in the combustion chamber on surfaces on the engine and that promotes all kinds of problems.
So if you give it a good cycle, like you get it real hot 20 minute run, whether it’s a pump or a generator, you’re probably in pretty good shape. Do that monthly. Don’t fire it up in June in anticipation of the potential for flooding.
Kenny Coogan: We’re going to take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor.
And when we return, we’ll be focusing on what to do with batteries.
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Winter Battery Maintenance
Kenny Coogan: We are back with Mark Mederski, the editor in chief of Motorcycle Classics Magazine. We’re talking about winterizing our vehicles, and part of our vehicles are batteries. Mark, what should we be doing with batteries?
Mark Mederski: I’m not a scientist or an electrical engineer, but what I know about batteries from mainly you learn [00:19:00] about things when they when they fail. Why did that happen? For the most part, the best practice on a battery is to keep it at full charge. And if you’re storing a vehicle, that’s got a lead acid battery or a lithium ion battery you’re not running the battery is not getting a charge from the alternator or generator on that machine. It’s just static. It’s just sitting there. The way the battery chemistry works, the battery will slowly lose charge. So when you call for it, it may be from instead of being at, 12 or 13 volts, it may be down to six and it won’t run the starter.
Buy yourself at least one battery maintenance machine. It’s a plug in the wall. They’re $25 to $100. You can buy some that have multiple leads on them. They’ll have a plug. If you put a pigtail on your vehicle, you can plug in quickly, [00:20:00] or you can use the alligator clips on the end. Make sure that, every three, four weeks you’re out there charging that battery. It’ll probably take six hours to overnight to do that. The most sophisticated chargers will, they’ll tell you that you don’t have to come back and turn it on and turn it off. I like to unplug it and walk away with it hanging on the wall ready for next time. We do hear those occasional horror stories of certain types of batteries or even battery maintenance devices flaming out. And that’s the last thing you want to happen in your garage with all your favorite machines. One or two battery maintenance devices and use them, every three weeks or so, if the machine is sitting.
How can we preserve old rubber parts on machines that we know we cannot find replacements for?
Kenny Coogan: We are talking about winterizing your vehicles and Mark, you worked in museums, which have the same goal, the conservation of parts. How can we [00:21:00] preserve old rubber parts on machines that we know we cannot find replacements for?
Mark Mederski: Kenny I have to say that I’m not optimistic about urethane and rubber parts. The first thing would be to keep them clean and keep them separated from any other kind of chemistry. In other words, you don’t want, grease or oil dripping onto or creeping into any, synthetic parts like that.
So clean them, dry them up and and protect them from any neighboring material. I believe that there’s a wide, and this is modern, polymer chemistry, but I think there’s a wide range of chemistry that’s used these days. And there’s a wide range of relative durability. I think most of us have come across something that I loosely referred to as made from urethane that just crumbles, it’s 10 or 20 years old and it, it used to be [00:22:00] black. It turns yellow or gray and and just crumbles. It’s similar to the metal. Magnesium in my opinion, there are built in elements in your average magnesium casting that will cause it to self destruct.
Powder coating peeling
Kenny Coogan: And Mark, what do you do if you see powder coating peeling?
Mark Mederski: Yeah, powder coat sometimes when it’s not applied with best practice if the surface isn’t prepped right powder coat peels. And what you’ve got then is this little cavity between the plastic, which is what powder coat is essentially, and the metal that it’s put over, which is usually steel. So that’ll hold moisture worse in, in climates where they salt the roads. It’ll hold corrosive salt. And if you want to see the worst of powder coat, look at a trailer hitch on a pickup or an automobile that’s been added. And after a few years they don’t [00:23:00] live in the friendliest environment down low on the vehicle there they’ll start peeling. I would go at it with a scraper kind of casually. You don’t have to do it very carefully or anything and knock off the loose stuff, or maybe the, like the next time you’re at the car wash, put the, a thousand PSI wand on there and knock off some of the powder coat, and then, grab a pint or a quart of a good black enamel. If you can find something that is referred to as a rust preventive enamel just brush it on. I wouldn’t even buy a spray can because if you brush it on, you can really get on a heavy coat of that finish and that’ll creep into the cavities between the powder coat that’s beginning to loosen up and and cover up the rusty areas as well. So it’s a stop gap. It’ll look a little better and it’ll slow the progress of the rust.
Being steward of machines
Kenny Coogan: Thank you so much, Mark, for talking about winterizing our vehicles. Do you have any [00:24:00] last words for our listeners?
Mark Mederski: Sure. I’m a vehicle and machine person. I love steam engines, stationary engines, motorcycles, cars, all the above. When it comes to, the best of these, the most interesting ones that we seem to collect and publish magazines about and such, I think we always need to keep in mind that we are stewards of these, it’s a temporary ownership thing, and they’re going to go on to another owner sometime in the future.
So do your best to take care of it. Preserve that history knowing that while we might live 70, 80, 90, a hundred years, that machine could live hundreds of years and help somebody down the road 10 generations understand what we really loved when we were on earth.
Kenny Coogan: Thank you so much, Mark, for the conversation today. I thoroughly appreciate it.
Mark Mederski: You bet, Kenny. Good to talk.
[00:25:00]
Credits
Josh Wilder: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www.MotherEarthNews.com/Podcast. You can also email us at podcast@ogdenpubs.com with any questions or suggestions. Our podcast production team includes Kenny Coogan, Alyssa Warner, and myself, Josh Wilder.
Music for this episode is the song Hustle by Kevin MacLeod.
Jessica Anderson: Until next time, don’t forget to love your Mother.
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