Automotive Preventive Maintenance: Winterization

Winterizing Your Vehicle

Way up here in South Dakota, where the snow flurries usually start before Halloween, most of us know to actually winterize our cars and trucks for the cold weather. But just what does it mean to winterize your vehicle? Can a mechanic actually do this for you?

What winterizing means for your vehicle:
Even if you don't enjoy severe seasonal weather changes such as we have throughout the year, winterizing your car or truck is a good and healthy practice to keep your vehicle in good shape and help it cope with changing weather conditions. After all, even if you don't freeze to death every winter, keeping your auto well maintained can help you maintain your vehicle at regularly scheduled intervals.

This procedure involves:

Changing your car's coolant fluids (often referred to as anti-freeze). For more information on changing your engine's coolant, see our Coolant Change article.
Changing your motor oil and oil filter with the correct weight & viscosity rated oil. For more information on changing your engine oil, see our Oil Change article.
Changing your fuel filter, if required.
Changing your car's paper air filter or maintaining your K&N or other foam/oil air filter.
Changing your windshield washer fluid (replacing it with special winterized washer fluid).
Checking your windshield wipers for excessive wear and/or streaking. Change these now if you are not sure that they will make it the entire winter season. Most auto parts dealers will replace your old wipers for free when you purchase new ones from them.
Changing your regular drive tires to snow tires or checking your all-season tires for good tread depth and rotating them.
Lubricating your drive train & other under-chassis moving parts (on older vehicles).
Checking your engine hoses for cracks, bubbles and/or leaks, replacing any hoses as necessary.
Checking your engine belts for cracks, fraying, considerable wear or excessive play. With the engine off, no engine belt should have more than an inch of play when pressed upon manually using your fingers.
Older cars may also require their regular tune-up (Modern vehicles with computer controlled electronic ignitions can run for extended periods without requiring a tune-up).
You should also check and replace the spark plugs and spark plug wires, periodically. For more information on checking and changing your engine's spark plugs, see our Spark Plugs article.

Whether you have your car/truck winterized by a trained mechanic, your next door neighbor, or do it yourself, by following a seasonal schedule of maintenance for your vehicle (in both summer and winter) you extend its life and enhance it's performance.

What winterizing means for you:
Winterizing your vehicle does not protect you in the case of an actual roadside breakdown, but it does help reduce the chance of such an occurrence. However, even the finest automotive mechanics have been stuck on the side of the road in the breakdown lane. So we need to prepare for such emergencies. And although our winter weather conditions may be more severe than yours, they still may well apply as you find yourself in unfamiliar territory when on even a short trip for an extended holiday.

Therefore, to fully equip yourself and your vehicle for winter, we recommend that you pack in your trunk (along with your spare tire):

An ice scraper and snow brush.
A roadside emergency kit consisting of:

3 road flares and/or 3 triangle reflectors.
A warm (heavy wool or space-age) blanket.
A flashlight: A wind-up or shake-to-light flashlight is preferred, but a rechargeable flashlight (which is charged-up) or at least a flashlight with good long-lasting batteries can suffice.

Candles and stick matches (or a new disposable lighter).
A small First-Aid kit.
A cell phone.

The cell phone's DC power adapter for the car.

A large (20 to 40 pound) bag of sand or salt.
A small folding shovel for emergencies.
Battery jumpstart cables or a portable emergency booster pack.
A can of Fix-A-Flat or a portable air compressor along with a tire gauge.
A pair of insulated coveralls for emergencies.
Insulated gloves.
An emergency meal of canned goods (or possibly a few).

If you are mechanically inclined, you would probably also want to include at least a small mechanic's tool set. Remember to use metric tools for most any car or truck built around or after 1987.

While fair weather state residents may scoff at these measures, these are not extreme, especially if you ever drive to or through any cold weather areas. If I lived in Alaska I would also include tire chains, a snowmobile suit, a pair of mutlucks and a couple pair of snowshoes in the trunk, just in case. Also remember that global warming is a real phenomena that produces surprising weather conditions to each extreme. Unfortunately, global warming is only getting worse.

Being surprised is fine, but be prepared for it, anyway. It will be easier to get through it, then.

This article has been updated on 3/25/2008. Although this article is Copyright Syd's Eastside Auto Parts, Used Cars & Rebuilders, it is available free from the Automotive Articles section archive. This article may be used or distributed freely from any website or article directory as long as this author's block remains intact and unaltered (with links active) and the entire article text remains unedited. However, this article may be presented in, and/or formatted to, your website's style (to better fit with your website's look and formatting) as long as the text is not edited. You may download a text document containing the textual content of this article (with simple html formatting commands included) to use as content within your own webpage, from http://www.SydsAutoParts.com/Articles/Winterization.txt. This article is authored by Doug Peters, Syd's Eastside Auto marketing director and webmaster. Syd's Eastside Auto Parts, Used Cars & Trucks offers a searchable, up-to-date inventory of New & Used Auto Parts online which is cross-indexed to allow results for interchangeable parts across makes, models and years. We also offer a Featured Auto Parts and Products Showcase, online. New auto parts are custom ordered for pick-up, delivery or shipment via our toll-free line at 1-800-505-5119. Syd's Eastside Auto is also a licensed South Dakota used auto dealer with a catalog of Used Cars and Trucks available online.