9 Tips to Get Your Car Ready for Spring
This time of year is so refreshing. The days are getting longer, the sun feels extra warm, and the weather is turning from chilly and wet to warm and invigorating. As much as you appreciate the change of seasons your car welcomes the change as well.
Winter is hard on your vehicle. That’s why we put so much effort into preparing for the cold and bracing for the challenges that winter driving holds. There is nothing on your car’s exterior, interior, or under the hood that isn’t affected by the winter.
So, let’s put Old Man Winter behind us by getting our vehicle’s out of winter mode and ready for spring. Here are 9 tips for getting your car ready for spring.
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1. Wash Your Car
There is nothing more important at the end of a cold, harsh winter than cleaning your car’s exterior. Salt and sand accumulate on your paint, making it look cloudy white even if your car is black. The worst problem is the salt, to be sure.
Salt is the biggest offender on damaging your paint and causing premature corrosion on your vehicle. It eats into your paint job’s protective clear coat finish and attacks the bare metal on your vehicle’s undercarriage, your brakes, your suspension, and under your hood. Any areas that salt can accumulate and sit are the areas you need to look out for the most.
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The solution is to wash your car and wash it well. You’ll want to use a wand wash instead of a drive-thru car wash because there are areas that can be missed with a drive-thru wash. Places like under the hood and in the door jambs, or the undercarriage and all those nooks and crannies around the fuel tank and behind the bumpers. Get deep in there with the pressure washer and soap as best as you can to clean off that corrosive salt. You can extend your car’s use by years if you clean out all that salt.
2. Change out Your Tires
Winter tires have been increasingly popular across the snow belt, and even in areas where the temperature consistently drops below 45F. The rubber compound of summer, all-season, and even all-weather tires hardens when the temperature drops below 45 degrees. That means that, even if it hasn’t snowed, you have less pliable tires than when the temperature is warm out. That rings true whether the roads are dry, rainy, or snowy.
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If you’ve got winter tires on your car, change them off for your summer or all-season tires once the temperature consistently stays over 45 degrees. Have your tires re-balanced and adjust the air pressures, including checking the pressure in your spare tire.
3. Check Your Brakes
While you’re changing out those snow tires for the summer ones, take a look at your brakes. You’re harder on your brakes in the winter than in the summer, applying the pedal more frequently due to nerve-wracking road conditions and avoiding collisions with other motorists.
Check the brake pads – both the inner and the outer pads – at each wheel to ensure even wear and enough material to safely drive until the next time you check them, which may only be when you put those winter tires back on.
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4. Change Your Oil and Check Your Fluids
Think about the temperature differences your vehicle experiences throughout the winter months. Your engine, in particular, goes from well below the freezing point to full operating temperature dozens of times per month. That change in temperature is the prime situation for moisture to form in your crankcase, contaminating your oil.
When springtime comes around and the mercury stays above the freezing point, change the oil and filter. All that moisture needs to come out and to prevent corrosion on internal moving parts. As well, water in your oil simply doesn’t lubricate your engine very well. While you’re at it, check the rest of your fluids to make sure they aren’t contaminated with water, and make sure your engine coolant is rated for the peak temperature you’ll see during the coming summer months.
5. Check Your Battery
It’s no secret that your battery is worked hardest during the winter months. The sluggish, cold parts in your engine demand extra power to crank over, drawing all the reserves from your battery. Now that it’s warming up out there, your battery doesn’t need quite as much power to start, but could be weakened by a harsh winter of cold starts. If it packs it in during the spring, it’s going to be a sudden surprise.
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Have your battery tested in the spring to make sure its reserve capacity is still good, its cells aren’t damaged, and that it’ll last you through until the next winter.
6. Wax the Exterior
Once the street sweepers have made their rounds, it’s time to take care of your paint a little more. You’ve already removed the salt and grime from winter driving, but now it’s time to restore your car’s shine.
Check that your paint is smooth and clean. If you can feel grit on your paint, use detailing clay to remove it before waxing your car. Once you’ve clayed the paint, apply a coat of your favorite car wax to rejuvenate the paint and restore a shine that was lost under all that winter grime.
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7. Clean Your Carpets
Why not start springtime with a clean slate? Those salt marks from your boots on your carpet don’t have to be permanent, though, for many people, they are. Simply clean your carpets in the spring, once the roads no longer require salt, to remove those unsightly salt stains.
8. Get an Alignment
Winter lays a licking on your steering and suspension. You may have run into a curb by accident, encountered one of the thousands of potholes that popped up, or maybe a little fender-bender set your steering wheel off-center. If you don’t have your wheel alignment corrected, you can wear your tires prematurely, put excess strain on your steering and suspension, and have a vehicle that is more difficult to control than it should be.
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9. Check Your A/C
While the temperatures may not call for you to crank the A/C quite yet, your air conditioning plays a vital role in this season where you can experience cold, rainy weather and hot humid days. The A/C draws moisture out of the air, preventing your windows from fogging up and keeping the climate inside your vehicle bearable.
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Get your air conditioning checked to make sure it’s operating properly and that the proper charge of refrigerant is in the system.
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