Tips for Taking Care of Your Car in the Winter

Winter with its brutal colds and heavy snow can wreck havoc on your car if you don’t have a garage to keep it in. Obviously the best thing for your car in the winter is a heated garage but many people don’t have one available. To keep your car looking and performing like new follow these tips for winter car survival.

Give yourself some extra time in the morning to let your car warm up and your engine to heat up in the cold winter mornings. It is very taxing on your vehicle if you start it up and start driving right away so make sure you give your vehicle a little adjustment time to make sure you don’t stress out your vehicle. Another great addition is a HID set for your car’s headlights to see and be seen in even the worst weather conditions.

A trick I often use so I don’t have to scrape the ice and snow off my car in the morning after a snowfall or extremely cold night is to cover your windshield with one of those sun shields people often put inside their car to keep the sunlight from coming into the car and overheating the interior or discoloring their seats. Putting one of these outside on your windshield will protect it from icing over and will allow you to simply take it off and shake the snow away in one quick move. You will save lots of scraping and shoveling time with this easy and quick trick.

This is a relatively small but often forgotten trick to keep your car free from snowfall; find a parking spot that is underneath a building, awning or even a bunch of large trees. This will keep the heavy snow off the top and windshield of your car, saving you time in the morning that you would normally have to spend cleaning and shoveling it off. And on that subject, one of my personal pet peeves is people who don’t clean the snow off the top of their vehicle’s roof before hitting the road. This is a driving hazard when the person is going 60 miles per hour and the snow on your roof is flying off and impairing my view so make sure you clean your car of all snow before you hit the highway or streets. Following these tips will hopefully save you some time and keep your car running and looking like new after the snow thaws.