As winter approaches, ensuring your car is prepared to handle the challenges of cold weather is vital for safe and smooth driving. Don’t let icy roads and freezing temperatures catch you off guard. This guide will take you through essential DIY car checks to winterize your wheels and keep your vehicle running at its best during the colder months. From checking tires and fluids to ensuring visibility and traction, these simple yet crucial inspections will help you stay one step ahead of winter’s unpredictable conditions. Let’s get your wheels winter-ready so you can navigate the frosty roads with confidence and peace of mind.
Car Tyres
First and foremost, the most important thing in the winter checklist is vehicles tyres. Make sure that your car tyres are inadequate condition, with no tears and bulges. Especially that applies if you are in an area that gets a lot of snow or even if they’re a chance of snow makes sure that you got the right type of tyres on your car.
You may need to upgrade to snow tyres which are designed to work on medium to High snow. These will give you the required traction and control that you need to drive your car safely in snowy conditions however these are not suitable for tarmac driving. It is a trade-off as if you get lighter snow then it may not be worth putting on the snow tyres because you will be constantly switching between the road tyres and the snow tyres which can be a bit of a hassle.
Regardless of the type of tyre important Factor is tyre pressure. You might want to drive your car are with slightly lower tyre pressure in snowing or severe winter conditions because that will give you that extra traction which will help keep you on track.
Winter Car Checks – Windshield Wiper
There is a lot of opportunities to update or replace your windscreen wipers before or during the winter. Winter can bring all sorts of unwanted and undesirable effects on your wiper’s health, hence cold frosty weather can deteriorate wipers performance in rapid ways. We suggest that you do
Pre-winter windscreen wiper upgrades or replacement and keep an eye to check out for any wear or tears that might happen during ultra frosty days.
Winter Car Checks – Under the hood – Engine Fluid checks
It is an established practice to keep eyes on engine coolant, windscreen fluid, and oil and it becomes more relevant during the hard winter season. More so for your engine coolant because you really do not want to freeze your engine coolant. Make sure that you are using proper grade engine coolant and it is of the required strength such that it does not freeze at the usual winter temperatures or even below that. Keep margin for some extra temperature drop as a precaution.
Examine the battery
All batteries tend to lose charge when working at colder temperatures. This becomes very relevant when you’re talking about car batteries as they are regularly exposed to extreme outdoor weather conditions if you happen to live in those areas. Battery failures during cold winter nights are a very frequent occurrence and you really need to prepare for that. It is not such that only the older batteries will fail, even the new ones are prone to failure in colder temperatures.
Not to worry though because there are very smart and efficient battery starters available on the market which can be charged over USB or mains and are of very efficient footprint suitable to be kept in the car. The only issue is you need to make sure that your starter is always charged so that when you need it enough charge is there to start your car. If you think that your battery is already weak or is showing signs of imminent weakness, try not to drive in winter conditions. Get a replacement or charge it fully before you go for a longer drive
Supplies and Emergency Winter Kit
It is very advisable that you take a moment and make a list of all those things which you may need if you were to break down in the middle of the night in the middle of somewhere or nowhere. A few things come to mind that you like to specify here.
- It will be nice to keep a warm blanket and/or winter jacket if possible. If the jacket can be highly visible that is an extra bonus, we highly recommend that you buy a winter hi-visibility coat.
- Some rations of food and water or soft drinks would be a bonus to keep in your car and make sure that they have a long expiry date on them so if they are left there for some time they do not expire
- A pair of snow and/or winter boots with extra warm socks would be a great addition.
- If possible, always keep a snow shovel and windscreen scraper with you
- A good quality torch or work light will be very helpful in the dark or even in foggy conditions.
- Although this is optional, we still recommend that you keep some traffic cones in the car boot with the flashing light added. This can greatly help if you break down in a place that is dark, so you can put them around your car for the benefit of other road users such that they can spot your vehicle in time.
- A good quality de-icer can be a Godsend in certain conditions. Make sure that you got at least one can of de-icer in the car boot, especially in the cold wintry conditions
Value Winter Car Checks – Halford Winter Checks
If you happen to reside nearby a Halford shop, they have cheap car winter checks or evaluations. Follow the link below to find out more.
Epilogue
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Update:
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Some external links for reference:
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/driving-advice/preparing-your-car-for-winter/
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/tips-advice/89243/preparing-your-car-winter-top-tips-and-things-check
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