CCRC GOLD: Preparing Your Car for Winter Storage

Good evening and welcome to Classic Car Restoration Club Gold Live. And I'm here today with Scott Parker. Scott's an old buddy of mine, we worked together on some magazine work. He's a journalist, an avid car enthusiast. He's got a really cool model A pickup that's to die for. But the thing I like about Scott is he brings another perspective to the car hobby, and I'm really excited to have him here, because he's not only a avid car enthusiast, he's an avid horsepower and performance enthusiast, and he's one of those guys that just always has a story to tell. So thanks for joining us tonight, Scott. Thanks. It's great to be here. I appreciate the invitation Mark. Tonight we're gonna talk about winter storage, and this expands to overall car storage too. A lot of times, collector cars and special purpose cars aren't used all the time, and you have to storm part-time, or a lot of times collectors keep a car, they put it away for longterm storage as well. And a lot of these same rules will apply, maybe with a couple of little things that are different here and there for the long-term, but we'll discuss those when we get to it. Mostly tonight, we want to talk about winter storage, and this is something that pretty much everybody East of the Mississippi, and everyone except our West coast friends. Yeah. Everybody stores their car at some point, you know? It wasn't so long ago we were down in Phoenix, we were there in March and those guys were just getting ready to put their cars away, and yeah granted they don't get to enjoy their cars when it's 120 degrees down there, but on the other hand, there's still a period of time where they're like putting their cars away and storing it. And even those people had to take a certain amount of precautions to make sure their- Preparations have to happen. Good when they were done. And unlike our friends in Los Angeles and San Diego who get to drive them all around the year, and they never get the opportunity to actually enjoy working on them. That's a difficult decision to make when to actually pull your car off the road and tear into it to get some work done out there. But they don't have to deal with winter storage out there, we certainly have to deal with it here. It's something that you have to prepare for. And it's something that I think a lot of people have an idea of what they want to accomplish by storing their car. But maybe some of the things we can talk about tonight will help make that a little bit easier. Yeah. And even though we were a little, if you live in Minnesota, you probably already put your car away, it doesn't mean you can't do some of the things we're going to talk about yet, even though your car's probably like locked up in the shed. But as you go further South there's guys just now thinking about getting their cars into storage, and getting those kinds of things taken care of and they want to make sure their car, when they bring it back out in the spring will work as well as it did when they put it away. To take a minimal amount of effort to begin enjoying the car again once the weather warms up a bit. Absolutely. So to start out I think it just, the no-brainers are before you do anything, before you get put your car away for the year for the next six months here in Minnesota, if you live further South, it's less time, but before you put that car away, the first thing you should do is really clean everything up, isn't it? I'll start at the outside. I mean, certainly a good cleaning, get all the bugs off, get everything nice and clean, and give it a good solid coat of wax, just to make sure that when you do put it away, it's got that nice paint coating on top, and everything's going to be ready. Yeah and... to help seal up that paint to make it so the dirt and the everything else washes right off. But the same thing is true. Good wax is there to prevent your paint from oxidizing. And your paint is still exposed to oxygen and air and temperatures and everything else, even in the middle of the winter. Well I know that I like to use a nice thick paste wax, certainly during the show season, the little spray wax to tune things up, clean the car is nice, but I like to put a nice thick coat of that heavy, heavy paste wax on it. Yeah. So it's one of my favorites. I used a good carnauba wax. Yes. A good carnauba wax, and that just tends to get seal up that surface real good. And if I get dirt and dust and whatever on it over the course of storing it, it's easy to clean in the spring. It's not just sticking to- Well, I like that layer of protection on the paint surface with the cover on the car as well. And a lot of guys love to store car inside with a cover over it and having that fresh coat of wax between the paint and the cover. I think that's a great idea just to minimize any friction between the two surfaces. I agree. Okay. After we get like the outside, the chrome all polished, 'cause you don't want to get rust on any of that. And you get the paint all sealed up, and you get all your aluminum stuff a good coat of polish on it. What's the next thing you think we should attack there? I think inside the car. I mean, clearly if you get the outside surfaces, the wheels all polished up, all the plastic and everything cleaned up nice, get all the stains and everything off, we move inside the car. The upholstery needs to be prepared for winter storage as well. Yeah. I know it actually comes down to even like some of the rodent control that we'll talk about later, but that fry that got away from you when you left The drive in the drive-in on the way home, and suddenly that becomes a meal for a mouse for like a week, that's the kind of stuff where you don't want to invite them in. You don't want to be at an attractant. But it's surprising how if you really look at what mice and rodents and a lot of those creatures will eat, it's just it can be powder virtually, just a little bit of dust in the car, and then it becomes, they're looking for food anywhere at that point, and why bring them into the car, you know? Well that and also heaven forbid you spilled anything, but to get that stuff, all those stains, everything cleaned up, the sticky soda, whatever it is that you may have spilled over the summer, get that stuff cleaned up once and for all, before you put it into storage, and any minor stain won't become a major stain that's going to be really hard to get out six months later. Yeah. And one of the things that I always do is before I put any car away, I just vacuum the snot out of it. It's you use the hand vac, you get up the big shop vac. You just go in there and just so, get up as much of that as possible, and into all the cracks and crannies around the sheets and all those places where it can gather because that's the stuff that it's good to get it out. It keeps your car looking fresh and clean inside. Plus it doesn't attract any rodents along the way. The floor mats come out, and get a good scrubbing, get all the nooks and crannies, move the seat all the way back, move the seat all the way forward, a really good detailed quality job. I think it's definitely a good idea right before winter. The seats now, I know a lot of vintage classic cars have cloth seats. A lot of newer cars have vinyl leather. It seems to be super easy to clean, but the cloth seats I think are a little special and they take a little extra care. Especially if that the material of the seats are made out of are not new necessarily, if you've got a- You get a lot of cars in the 30s where the material is actually wool. You have the wool broadcloth and even some of the wall mohairs, you want to make sure you clean those well, because those materials themselves will age quicker if they're left dirty. And again, with stains, if you get a stain in those, you can get it out if it's still relatively fresh, but if you leave it longterm, it might never come out. It could be there for life. The, after we get it cleaned up inside, we got it cleaned outside, we gotta start preparing this car to actually sit for a long time. And we're just talking six months at this time. I think it's probably like the number one question I get all the time is like, Hey I've got this car that's been stored for 30 years, what do I got to do to it? The problem is most people don't think about that when they put the car away for the last time, the car that's been sitting there for 30 years was just driven in there, and it wasn't a conscious decision, we're not going to drive it for another 30 years, and the car sat there with stinky fuel, and all this other stuff. So yeah, they require a lot more work to get them going. But just for winter storage, there's just a few things we need to do and make sure that we get them done so the car will start in the spring. That's true. Well, we don't want to have any issues at all. A lot of fluids in a car. All throughout the drive line, all the systems that are fluid driven, all those fluids need to be addressed just a little bit. Some just topped off, others changed, but let's go over, let's start with fuel. Yeah. And that's probably like the number one thing you guys are gonna have a problem with. It's like you park your car and then you go to start it in the spring, and it doesn't want to start or the fuel, or if it does start, it's like runs poorly. And a lot of that comes down to just the fuel is either evaporating out of the carburetor, and gumming up the carburetor as it evaporates or the fuel itself is turning. It's true. The older a fuel is the more of those... more of the fuels power is just evaporating away. And our favorite product to the store with is stable. Now it doesn't take a whole lot. They give you a nice measuring device on here to figure out how much you need based on how many gallons you've gotten the tank, throw some of that in, slush it around a little bit, make sure it mixes in well and gets all the way up to the carburetor and through the injecting system. And you'll be okay with that, that will allow the fuel to last through a good winter piece of storage. And you can tell that it's November here in Minnesota because half of this, more than half of this bottle is already gone, and it's gone in my lawnmower and numerous cars around here. But I think fuel stabilization is probably the one, the biggest thing you can do to make sure your car is going to start in the spring. It's true. Now I prefer to run about a half a tank of fuel in the winter. And then as soon as I can in the summer, I'll top it off with fresh fuel so I can go ahead and start getting rid of that older fuel. I know that some guys prefer to top it off. I mean, that's- Yeah, and that's well, where I've always been in the camp. There's like many different camps. Some guys that say drain the tank completely, run your car till the tank is bone dry. And then go from there. Other guys that say, well, a half a tank, I usually go full tank. My reasoning for a full tank was always, well I use non-oxygenated, non-alcohol fuel in my tanks in all my classic cars, but I also put fuel stabilizers in them. And the biggest problem I have with running a half tank or empty tank is that there's not really a lot of coatings inside a gas tank. And so by having air inside the tank, it opens it up to corrosion, because as winter progresses and it gets hot and cold inside the garage or wherever you've got it stored, that fuel can actually attract moisture, and or attract moisture in the air, because if we ever pumped gas, you know that it reacts to temperature differently than the air around it. So it tends to, you can build up condensation in your tank. So my premise has always been, if I have a full tank, there's no room for condensation. There's no exposed bare metal inside my tank. Where you believe like a half a tank of fuel, and of course all stabilized and stuff. And where some guys believe just a bone dry empty tank. And if you're going to go store your car for more than a year, Long-term storage. Long-term storage, yeah, I'm a big advocate drain every, drain everything out, oil, everything out of the gas tank and the fuel system, you don't have to drain the oil system, you just have to have fresh oil, but you don't need to drain that system. But the, so we effectively have a difference of opinion, but I don't know if I've seen any quantitative data that says one way or the other. Well another thing, the fuel tank in my car is stainless. And because I run a stainless tank, then I don't have the corrosion issues inside of it like a steel tank normally would. So I can justify both sides of that opinion. But certainly when it comes to draining all the fuel out, I understand that as well. Especially with the oxygenated fuel with alcohol in it, a lot of the carburetor seals and gaskets don't necessarily like that stuff. And long-term, there can be some degradation of those gasket surfaces and some of the rubber seals inside of a lot of older carburetors. Now, if your carburetor has been rebuilt recently, a lot of the modern materials are designed to deal with that alcohol. And it's not such a big deal, but certainly if you're going to be storing your car longterm, running it completely dry is your best course of action. And the fuel won't turn to varnish that way, which is- Yeah. Well, yeah, if it's completely empty, I can see the point of the system, there's nothing in the system that's gonna varnish. To a point there's still always going to be some- A little residual. There's gonna be some fuel, Nooks and crannies. In your carburetor bowl. There's gonna be a little bit of fuel in your tank. and filters and everything else, it's impossible to run a system completely dry, unless you take a fuel tank out and... Manually. manually dump it out and dry it and then everything else. But that would Be planning for longterm storage on high level. That'd be planning for real long storage, yeah, and planning not to drive it. I know some show cars are actually where they're owned by collectors and stuff, a lot of times they'll take a lot of the fluid. They'll take all the radiator fluid. They'll take the antifreeze out of them. They'll take the fuels out of them. They'll take a lot, I know even, our good friend, Bob Wilson down at RJ Restorations whose building boss 429 Mustangs. And there's a lot of cases where his customers, some of his customers will have him restore a car and put zero fluids in it. Where they know the car is going to get pushed off a trailer into a showroom, and it's going to sit there, and they don't want to worry about it leaking anything on their showroom floors. Heaven forbid. We're talking about real cars with real people that actually drive them. That's more who we're talking to right now. But certainly there's some different schools of thought based on what you've got. And you can look at your own equipment and determine what the best case scenario is for you. But that's generally fuel is something that needs to be addressed. Yep. I agree. And if you add steel stabilizers and whatever your belief is on how full or how empty to think the tank with, I think the number one goal is to make sure you put those fields stabilizers in your fuel, so the fuel, if you ever smelt fuel that starts to go skunky on you, where it just gets that real pungent smell, and I've even over the course of a winter had fuel that started to go bad, and while I'm not a long ways from a gas station here, it was like you have half the power you normally do trying to get there, and you're thinking, Holy smokes, this is like a big difference. And then soon as you get a fresh tank of fuel in there, suddenly everything runs fine. Right? Yeah. Putting some miles on right away and get as much of that old fuel out as you can, as soon as the car is out on the road again, that's always a good move. But now the oil. Similarly condensation is our enemy here. And we all know that when you heat a motor up and then let it cool- Any time you start an engine, you can build up moisture inside the crank. That's correct. And if you leave that stuff alone, then it's inevitable that you're going to get some moisture inside the engine. Best thing you can do for a storage situation is right before you put it into storage, go ahead and change oil and filter. Yeah. And it's not only the moisture you have to worry about, it's the the fact that there's exhaust gas and everything else that get introduced to oil and there's actually acids and stuff, that actually get put into the oil. So just leaving that oil sitting in one place, and the acids will separate, the acids and the moisture and all that separate out from the oil. And what you end up with is like layers where you can, you can see an engine where it's just been sitting for a really long time. You open them up and you can see that ring around inside where stuff. And you gotta remember that oils everywhere, that oil's up on top, that oil's inside the lifters, that oil's up in your valve train. So that same rings and corrosive actions are going, taking place all over. Multiple levels inside the engine, that's absolutely true. So it's a good idea to just drain out all that oil, put in a fresh batch of oil and run the engine, just for a few minutes and get fresh oil pumped throughout that whole drive, Circulate throughout the entire engine. Absolutely. And that, and a fresh filter and you should be ready, certainly the six months or whatever it's going to be that that car will be put away, that's going to be a fine step in the right direction. Yeah. Yeah. And then moving forward, after you get the oil all changed out, you want to also think about your antifreeze. And depending on where you're storing it. Here in Minnesota, you aint gonna sit, we've had days at 60 below here in Minnesota. It's true, absolutely, true. And it's hard as that is for people to believe. That's not wind chill, that's like the air temp. So depending on what kind of climate you're in, you need to make sure that if you're, and it's a good time of year anyways to flush out your radiator systems, and flush out the cooling system. And that way you've got a fresh charge of antifreeze in there. And then when it does get really cold, you can make sure that your anti-freeze, you can use a tester and make sure that the antifreeze in your engine is set for like the maximum cold temperature of wherever you're at. If you're in Minnesota, it's like as much as you can get out of it, but not every state in the union requires quite that level. No, we have to with a little bit of the extreme on this part of the country. But that's something that we're used to as well. I haven't had a block crack as long as I've lived here. Done correctly, if you just take care of this stuff and make sure before you put a car away that it's prepared for storage, then having the right amount of coolant in and making sure it doesn't, it's well taken care of and it won't freeze up on you. You'll be right. And with a fresh batch of, because that antifreeze is just going to be sitting in one place for the six months, it's not going to circulate, it's not running anything through. It's a good idea to have a fresh gallon, a fresh batch of antifreeze in the engine just for corrosion standpoint and help. And so those sediments and stuff that are in your cooling system, no matter what you're always going to have some sediments, so those don't like just settle in anywhere. You can get most of those out from driving it, and you have the fresh antifreeze. I know Scott has some ideas regarding like concentrate versus the premixed antifreeze. I am not a fan of the premixed, only because the, it's a cost thing, frankly. I mean, the concentrate that you go ahead and mix yourself, you save so much money, versus buying the premixed ready to use 50/50 that the same manufacturers put together. It's not a whole lot of money, I know, but it just, it's one of those things that it's always been, full strength, concentrate mix it yourself as long as we've been working on cars. And then suddenly a few years ago, they came out with the ready to use pre mixed and the cost break for giving you water wasn't worth it. They sell you a half a gallon of water for another 7 bucks a gallon. And it's like you can like get that a lot cheaper. Truly, but no, always buy the concentrate, mix it yourself, make sure that your ratio is what you need, what works best in your car. I know the guys on the West coast, they use a little bit more water. The guys back here, use a little bit more coolant, especially in the winter. That's what works fine. And yeah, you can save some money by buying the concentrate. That's definitely the way they go. But make sure that your stuff doesn't freeze up, so you've got to use the use the good concentrate. And make sure you test it. Even if you drain your system down and put in 50/50 mix, or whatever your mix is that you will like for your area, make sure you test it because an engine will hold a lot of, even after you drain the radiator and the block and everything else, there's still antifreeze in the system. You guys ever pull an engine out of a car, you think you've got everything drained until you get the engine half out, Until you flip it over. It's dumping fluid all over the place though. So it's a good idea, after you get it refilled and run the engine, make sure you use your tester, know exactly where it's at for. So if you got to add some more that you've got that protection. Any other fluid in the car that we need to concern ourselves with? Oh, thinking about, it's a good time also to look at your brake fluid. Brake fluid needs to be changed annually. And it's like out of sight is out of mine. To me, a car things that get neglected, not using not so much oil, because when oil gets neglected, engine starts getting loose. You can hear it. It's burning off, and people have to add it to it. Antifreeze again, people, I know people that are go the length, the life of their car and never touch their antifreeze. But break fluid and that's not a good thing. And you can't be thinking like that just because of the like running out of oil. Brake fluid is one of those things because brake fluid absorbs moisture out of the air. And because, no matter how tight your system is, your a master cylinder or camp has to let a certain amount of air in just to compensate for the fuel or fluid that's getting pushed out to the, either the calipers or the wheel cylinders. So because it's in contact with atmospheric air, it's going to pull in moisture, because brake fluid itself absorbs moisture out of the air. And the problem is you're gonna store your car for a winter, you got to get, it's a good time to get that fluid out of your system once a year. So if you have moisture in your system, it's not just sitting in your brake lines, sitting in your... creating corrosion. The brake fluid itself, won't corrode those components. It's the moisture inside the brake fluid that will. Right. So, once a year and I like to it at winter before it's just gonna sit for six months. Take a syringe or something, suck as much of the fluid as you can out of the reservoir, top off your reservoir, then bleed our your brake lines, so you get fresh fluid coming down to all your brake lines, you get rid of all that moisture in the brake fluid, and it's just common sense. And if you make a habit out of doing it when you put your car in storage, you know you're not gonna have a problem with it in the spring, and you've got your fresh brake fluid for the next season. Great time to inspect that seal inside the master as well. You pop that cap off. Something that I've made a habit of is you always inspect, clean that seal underneath that cap, make sure that's got a nice clean surface to seal up against on the master cylinder itself. You'd be amazed how often you look at that and you find some crud, you find some damage, even find some corrosion on the surface of the master cylinder itself. Something that's gonna prevent that from sealing properly, it's a great time to look at that while you're topping it off, and just make sure that that seal is 100% good there. Yeah, and think if you just get in the habit of these are the things I do before I put my car away. Things like brake fluid, and the antifreeze and those things that will really help your car last a lot longer. Make those like routine habits, and the payoff is down the road. Take that day or take that weekend, those two days, and just spend some time with your car. I mean, we enjoy driving our cars and being able to build them ourselves, and it's not that great of a sacrifice to take a full day and do these preps, this bit of preparation to get it ready for the winter, or even the weekend over two days. Go out in the garage, get the radio going the way you like, take the time to do it right and know that when you put that car away and are able to turn the lights off and go back in the house, you know that car is ready to go through the winter. And as soon as springtime comes, you're gonna be able to go back out, everything in it is fresh, it's been well taken care of, it's been prepared and you're ready to start enjoying it again. One of the things that I also like to go after is lubrication. As long as I'm under the car and I'm changing oil and I'm doing so many other things, I like to grease the entire chassis before I put it away for the winter. Again, it's the case where I've got old grease in there, and while I don't suspect it's gonna harden up over the course of the winter, it's nice to get a fresh batch of grease in there, and while I'm at it, I start lubricating things like door hinges, and hood hinges and those things, because the car's gonna sit for a while, from experience, depending on where it was stored, I've had like 30s cars where it's got that big long piano hinge in the middle, Up the middle of the hood. And it's just a bare steel rod that's encapsulated in two pieces of sheet metal, and you come back in the spring and you say, oh I gotta put a little gas on the carburetor and fire it up, and you go to lift that hood and it's just like oh man, and that hinge is, that old big old piano hinge is just fighting you all the way. And it's jus a little bit of corrosion that can make that really tight. So, what I usually do is take some WD40, and I just spray that down that big old piano hinge and I let that soak in, then I wipe it off the painted surfaces, but it gets in there. And I do a lot of the same stuff with like door hinges and things like that where I can get a little fresh lubrication on those things before it sits for a long time. And then I know when I go to open it in the spring, the doors are gonna open fine and the hood is gonna operate correctly. Yeah. Even little stuff, trunk hinges and a glove box door. I mean a lot of old cars I've had, that glove box door'll squeal at you. I've had 'em where you'd be pretty tight pulling down too. So yeah a little squirt goes a long way. Doesn't take a lot, but sure makes a difference in the car. Yep. I agree. And I know we've got the next area, like a lot of guys talk about it, should I put my car on jack stands for the winter? Or should I take the tires off? Or should I over-inflate the tires? And there's like no one answer. A lot of times it comes down to personal preference. And but there are a few cases where I say you really have to do something and one of 'em is if your car is still running bias ply. And with a lot of the retro car look and the traditional hot rod kind of stuff. A lot of guys are running, you'd think that bias plys were dead, but they're still very much alive. A lot of the muscle car guys like them too. They want their bias ply tires on their car because that's the style that was on it when it was new. That's a proper restoration, they go right down to the tires. But the problem with those tires is, if they sit on them all winter, for 6 months here in Minnesota, you'll have a flat spot on those things, then you might spend a month of driving before that flat spot finally goes away. Yeah that can be pretty unpleasant, and I mean there's solutions for that. Certainly this is where people got used to taking the wheel and tire off the car and leaving it up on jack stands all winter. That's become a very popular thing to do. The over inflation thing is something that works really well. Personally I keep my car on carpet. The softer surface plus a little extra PSI in the tires prevents any flat spotting on my car. So that is something that works for me. I've seen guys that use pieces of thick carpet under each wheel. Me, I've got a spare piece of carpet that is big enough to fit under the whole car, so I just go ahead and park on that all winter, that works just fine for me. But wheel storage. I mean if you're gonna take the wheel and tire off the car, you have to store it properly as well. There's a couple different ways you can do that. What probably I found to be the best way is to stack them in a corner, preferably with a piece of cardboard between them or even a little piece of plywood, stack them up that, and that way if they're loaded on the side, they're not gonna ever have any reason to flat spot in any way. Yep, that makes sense. And if you do put your car up on jack stands, and sometimes guys don't wanna take their cars off, take the tires off, or sometimes they'll have like a separate set of tires they just store their cars with. But if you don't wanna take your tires off, and you wanna jack it up, you wanna jack it up, you don't have to get it like a mile in the air. You wanna get it high enough- Just to get the load off the tire, right. Take the weight off the tires, so they're not prone to going down. And with the weight off the tires, because tires normally lose air over winter anyway, even when you're driving, the cars you're driving, a lot of times, you'll start losing air on cold winter days. Especially with aluminum wheels. I mean aluminum wheels when it gets really cold, they shrink a little bit and that may impact how much air is able to creep past the bead. And there's nothing that can be harder on your classic car than coming out and seeing it sitting on flat tires, because then you've got the rim riding right on the side walls of your tires and that's not a good situation to have. Never. Never ever good. And so, in some cases, if you're not looking at your car all the time, making sure your tires are up, it's a good idea to put it on jack stands, that way if your tires do go down, if your tires do lose air, the weight isn't on them. That's true. So there's a few different ways you can look at it. I normally, just for a lot of my cars, I'll just over inflate the tires. I put like an extra 10, 15 PSI into them. I'm not driving them overinflated, I'm just over inflating them a little bit so if I do lose a little pressure over the course of the winter, it's not going to affect them that much. All my cars have radials anyways. Minimizes that contact patch a little bit too. Yeah and if you have a radial tire, they're less prone to flat spots, you know? Unlike the bias plys, the radial tires will come back right away if they've been sitting in the same spot all winter. Yup. Absolutely good idea. You gotta do something. But how you choose to do that, there's a lot of different ways to make sure that your tires remain nice and round, and ready for another season when the weather finally comes back. It's a good thing. Moving beyond tires, the one thing that everybody is gonna cry about is when they hop in their car and they turn the key and it just goes and there's not enough power to start it next spring. It amazes me to no end how much I hear about this. It's true. But guys complaining about their battery and the fact that all they did was leave it for six months in the garage in the winter, and it's the damn batter that failed on 'em when they come back out in the spring, right? And you're just like well, did you give the battery a fighting chance? Did you do anything to help it out? And most of the time, like you said, they pull in the garage, turn the key off and they don't even think about it until they come back out in the springtime, and you've gotta give your battery a fighting chance. If you're able to help your battery a little bit, it'll last twice as long. I think the misnomer here is that a lot of guys think, well, I shut off my car, it'll be fine, in the spring I'll throw it on the charger, and I'll bring it right back. But that's not really the case. That's not the case. That's not the case at all. I mean like you said, it can get to -30, -40, these are real numbers that our cars see, and a battery can and will freeze. If a battery freezes up, it's gonna do damage inside the battery, internal damage, and even thought you might be able to bring that battery back to a point where it'll be functional for a while, it's never gonna be able to recover from a freeze like that, if it recovers at all. There's ways around this. There's a few different things you can do. Now, you disconnect your batteries when you park your car, I have a master switch I like to use, does the same thing. But, yeah disconnect the battery and go ahead and put at least a maintainer on it, we've got a couple different examples here. This maintainer, it's not brilliant. This is a CTEK. It's a nice little CTEK piece, it's not super expensive. But it will maintain your battery at over 12 volts. And this one has a few modes, I see, so if you're doing a motorcycle or a car and you have a few different options as far as, and they're all different I've found as far as maintainers and I think it's important to recognize the biggest killer of a battery is dropping below 2.6 volts. It's true. A fully charged battery is 2.6+ volts. As soon as it starts dropping below 2.6, 12. or 12, I'm sorry. 12.6. But as soon as it drops below 12.4, then sulfation begins, and that's where actually led acid crystals start forming on the plates, and at 12.4 volts. And that's like 50% charged, or 75% charged at that point. So, it's important to think then what happens when you build up that sulfation inside the battery, is that hinders the battery to perform an electro-chemical reaction inside the battery. Well that's covering up the surface area that the acid and the led need to interact on, it's not able to touch the led anymore because it's got the sulfation corrosion on the plate. And the more of that inside your battery, the less you're able to charge it. So by letting that battery die over the winter, and say oh I'll throw it on the charger in the spring, you've already killed your battery. You might be able to get it to charge up in the spring, and you might be able to throw it on the charger and it might take a charge and it might work fine, but you've decreased the total available power dramatically in that battery. And then in the next year or maybe halfway through the next season, suddenly your battery goes dead, suddenly you've got a year and a half year old battery, and it's dead. And who are you gonna blame? You're gonna blame Optima or the battery manufacturer. But when you've got a maintainer or a charger maintainer, this one's got, this is one of the Optima deals, this has got a processor inside of it that actually tests your battery, puts a little bit of a load on it, does more than just maintain it, but it's a terrific maintainer as well. You know me, 'cause I was burning through Optimas like man, they've gave me a nice 7-year warranty, and I was burning through one every two years. And I'm they were probably going, what the hell are you doing? But, I switched to, I bought this exact charger which is now in the other building and my 35's on it and I'm not gonna touch it. But ever since putting this specific maintainer charger on it, I've got five years on that battery and I've never had an Optima battery last five years. And the same, well this one also has an AGM battery and it's not an Optima brand, but it's an AGM battery, same technology, and using the same maintainer and charger on that one, same thing, you know? If you keep the charge up in your battery, it will last you a long time. And it can't freeze. That's another thing too, that this keeps the battery warm enough and has energy going through it where it's impossible, it can't freeze. So it's definitely something that you wanna do if you're gonna be storing a battery over the winter and it's really cold. Definitely put at least a maintainer, maybe a charger maintainer on it. Well, ideally if you can, you take the battery out of the car. Take it out, bring it in the house. Bring it in the house, it's nice and warm in there. You don't have to worry about any if there's a power outage or the kid knocked the maintainer, the plug-in out of the wall, your battery's not gonna freeze. But ideally if you can, take the battery out of the car, bring it in the house, find a nice, warm place, down in the basement and whatever, and you can put a maintainer or something on it, or if you have a number of batteries you can move them around throughout the course of the winter. Ideally that's the best scenario. Otherwise, make sure your car's plugged in with a maintainer- Battery disconnected. With the battery disconnected throughout the course of the winter. What really good batteries are absolutely worth it, they're worth the extra money to get a good quality battery, but take care of that investment. And if you do that, I mean it's unusual for a battery to last seven, eight, nine years in a limited use car if you take good care of it and keep it charged up all the time and don't let it freeze. Another thing that when guys are getting their car ready, they're getting the spot ready for where they're gonna store their car, and I know in the other shop, I have a blue plastic tarp a lot like this one that I roll out on the floor. While during parts of the summer it's warm and dry and everything else, I just drive in on the concrete all the time over there. But when I store it for the winter, I like to take a, throw it on the floor, and then I park the car on top of that, that way if any moisture wicks out of the concrete, it doesn't create this super humid space underneath my car- It's a moisture barrier. Where suddenly I have chassis components rusting out, and the frame and everything that I've worked so hard to make perfect, I don't have to worry about having that moisture condition coming up through the concrete. You can do like you do, after you have that vapor barrier there, you have like carpeting there or something so there's something soft for your tires. Yeah I like a carpeted garage, I don't know, maybe I'm a little weird. No, you have a place to lay down when the wife kicks you out. There's that. But also I mean having a piece of carpet under the car in the garage has helped me out in a few different ways. I mean when I'm working underneath it, I like having that piece of carpet there. If it drips a couple bits of oil or something, the carpet will pick it up. I don't know, but this is one of the things I like it the best for is in the winter to have that barrier between the car and the concrete for the tires and for this moisture concern. And dealing with moisture is a big aspect of storing any car, you know? And yeah, there may be a case where you've bought that car at the last minute that was too good of a deal on craigslist to pass up and now suddenly you're storing it alongside your garage outside, a blue tarp can help there. If you're getting snowfall. Having like snowfall and stuff as opposed to just leaving it sit with two feet of snow piled on top of it. It's a good solution to prevent that, but once the weather starts to turn warmer again, I suggest strongly, get them tarps off because all they do is tend to hold moisture underneath them and they can rust a car up quicker than heck, you know? Because a lot of the blue plastic tarps or the plastic tarps and stuff don't do a good job of letting moisture back underneath. That's correct. Well, moisture inside the car, if it's a humid area, or you've got a lot of moisture, fog, whatever, condensation happening inside the car, all of that, now I keep my windows rolled down a few inches to try and let it dry out any of that moisture from the inside. There's desiccant products that help that as well. Yeah and one that I've used in some places is like the DampRid and it's available, like these, this is an actual thing that looks like a coat hanger, you can hang these inside on the wardrobe pulls on the back of your car and they actually will suck the moisture out of the air inside, and actually separates it so you can actually see the water that it's pulling out of the air inside. I think it's a great product for getting the moisture of a car, especially if you're storing a car a damp area, especially like these 50s mopars, if you go look at a lot of the 50s mopars, they used a lot of pot metal inside and they're notorious for getting, the pot metal getting all pitted inside, this is not metal that's exposed to the weather, it's not exposed to elements, all that pitting is caused, well first because it's cheesy pot metal plating that they put in on 'em, but on top of that, it's the moisture in the air. It's just the moisture in the air that's causing all the pitting to all this pot metal in there. So it's a good idea to keep the inside of your car really dry, and one way you can do that is with a desiccant type dryer. This is like those little packets that come in so many products that get shipped or your beef jerky or whatever, right? Yeah we all live on beef jerky. When you're driving, that's... These, I've used these both like in this coat hanger kind of arrangement, as well as they have 'em in little tubs where it's got a little seal on top and you can set a couple of those on the floorboards, and you come back to your car next spring and while in Minnesota we don't have a lot of moisture in the air in the middle of the winter, because once the air reaches 40 below, there's no moisture left in the air. But as soon as spring comes and you start getting all the snow melting and everything else, there's a lot more moisture in the air and making sure you keep, even though you can't drive your car yet, it's still an opportunity for the human environment to take a toll on a lot of the interior surfaces of your car. Absolutely. You don't want things to get moldy or anything like that, and it's gotta have moisture to do that, so keeping a desiccant on the inside of the car is a good idea. Keeping a desiccant in there, and the dryer you can keep things, the better, bottom line. Whether it be inside the car or outside the car, keeping the moisture away from the top surfaces as well as from underneath. And finally we're gonna get to the biggest problem, the biggest danger, fear that all us car guys have and that's Mice, rodents. It's real. And that's something that, I mean, if you haven't seen it, you will. It's something that is absolutely real, mice love to be under cars, inside cars to live out the winter. And they loved the wiring. We'll talk about that a little bit. Certainly a lot of the interior fabrics, more on old cars the new cars, we'll talk about that as well. And there's a lot of different things you can do. A lot of myths and legends, old wives tales, and new technologies that are available to help keep the rodents out of your car, so. I think does start with, the first thought of when you want to get rid of the mice is I want to I got to trap them, to build a better mouse trap. And the thing that's important to remember with traps is they require some sort of an attractant to bring the mice to the trap. And Scott's got a couple of examples over here. So we've got some basic snap traps. Old school. And then we've got some newer school things where the mice actually... The old snap traps work really great. Nothing works better than that, although you have to attend to them, you have to go visit them all the time. Another great one is what they call a spin trap and this allows the mice to in and then it spins closed and gets them that way. Now you don't have to ever see it. It says that it's caught, you just throw the whole thing out. It's just a disposable deal, if you don't wanna see or deal with any of the rodents that are chasing your car down, this is the solution. But the thing to remember with most traps is you don't wanna put them under your car, you don't wanna put them in your car, because you don't wanna attract the mice because you're gonna use some sort of an attractant, you don't wanna bring the mice to your car. Right, you don't want them to think that that's the place to go for a meal. So you wanna put those out around the edges of your, it can be inside, I know guys that will put the traps outside of their building, 'cause they don't want the mice even wanting to be attracted into the building. But mice have a tendency to wanna go around the edges of things, they'll go around the edges of walls. Outside and inside. So just keep that in mind if you're gonna use traps. Or poisons. Put 'em near the wall. And then that way you know that's where they'll be and away from your car. Next thing you can use is a poison. Poison also, you don't have to usually deal with the immediately emptying traps or getting rid of traps. But if you are gonna use a poison, like the d-CON products, I strongly suggest putting them in, while d-CON makes a number of traps, and a number of the manufacturers make little carriers where you can put this up against a wall, mice like to crawl into dark, confined areas, and that way if the neighbor's cat gets in your garage or your dog gets in the garage, it can't get to the poison. It's inside of here, only the mice can get to it, and it's safe to use in that regard, but it's, if you've got a lot of cats, it's probably best not to use the poisons at all because a cat will still go after the poisoned mice. Right. And birds as well, that's been a thing that, the predatory birds and owls have been killed by poisoned mice, so it's not something that everybody likes to use, it's understandable, it is available, we wanted to talk about it. Glue traps are another solution that neither of us have chosen to use, but it is something that's available. Another thing that we've seen recently are rodent repellents. And the funny thing about rodent repellents is that you really don't know if they work. Because if you still see that you've got mice, then maybe they didn't work as well as you wanted, but there's some products out there that claim to keep mice away from where you spray them or place them. I think there's a lot of new products on the market, I know TomCat makes what they call a rodent repellent. If you smell it, it smells a lot like peppermint oil. Peppermint is one of those natural remedies a lot of people say use a good repellent for mice, maybe this is the kind of thing you use closer to your car, you set your traps far away and you use scents and stuff that mice don't like closer to your car. It might a good, like a two part kind of scenario where you wanna drive them to where the food is and away from something they don't like the smell of. Now this was something new that I found that I hadn't seen before, it's the hippy version. It's botanical. It is botanical. They are four little satchels in here. Let's go ahead and open it up, we'll take a look. I haven't seen this before, I just spotted it at the store, I thought it was an interesting product. So I thought we would take a look at it, but it says you can go ahead and put this right into your car, these satchels. Oh they're little packets of scent. Right, and they don't really smell that bad, I mean compared to other stuff that we've used in the past. It's kinda Christmas-tree-like. It smells kinda Christmas tree-y. Yeah, balsam fir oil is what's inside this thing, and apparently it's supposed to keep- Mice don't like that smell, I guess. I guess not. I've never seen a mouse in a Christmas tree, so. It must work, says keeps mice out. That's what it says. But all natural product. Doesn't have a lot of chemicals or anything creepy in it. So that's neat too. And that might be the kind of thing, if you're gonna put something in your car. I know for years the standby was mothballs. And everybody put, it was like you go to an old car show where they had a bunch of model-As and model-Ts and every time you stuck your head in the door, a window of one of those cars, all you could smell was mothballs. Mothballs and must, yeah. And they do work, they do a good job of keeping mice away and moths if you have a wool interior, it's a good thing. But you end up with a car that smells... You end up with a car that smells like mothballs. And that's not pleasant, no. We've heard same stories about Bounce dryer sheets. And Irish Spring soap. These are like if you, I have a buddy who has a cabin in the middle of nowhere in Deadwood, South Dakota, and he swears by Bounce dryer sheets. Everything, when we open up, wow, we have never seen a single mouse dropping in this thing in the 10 years of going up there. But when you walk in the door and there's an entire case of Bounce dryer sheets spread all over, I can't imagine any living creature living in there. So maybe it's a quantity thing. But they do have, I have used these in this car why? Mainly 'cause my wife likes the smell of them. Could be worse, could be worse. And we know it's not like a toxic kind of thing, where the mothballs, beyond the smell, the horrible smell, if you leave them in your car, they actually emit a fume that's toxic to humans, so it's not the kind of thing, do you really wanna be in that environment, you know? I'm not a fan of mothballs. I'd rather use dryer sheets. The Irish Spring, yeah to me, Irish Spring, I know a lot of guys that swear by this stuff, and then other guys that swear at it saying the mice chew on it. But I think the bigger problem there is the guys buy one bar of Irish Spring and they thing it's good for the next 10 years. The smell is definitely stronger when the product is new. And if it's gonna have any chance to work, a fresh product is probably gonna be the only way to go. So, these are traditional remedies that some people swear by. I think I'm gonna go ahead and try these new school rodent repellent satchels and we'll see how that works. We'll look for an update next spring from you. See if the model A has any mice in it. Or at least a nice Christmas-y smell. But the spray I haven't heard of before, I thought that was a pretty interesting concept. It smells peppermint-y. It's unusual, but again- It's the kind of thing where worth testing it. Worth testing. I think maybe more as a barrier. Maybe around the outside of the car. I don't know if I'd want to spray that inside the car. Yeah I don't know if I'd spray that in my car, but maybe on the carpet around my car. Right? Something like that. Where it would create like a place where they didn't wanna go. Exactly, exactly, so. And then finally, one of those things, that you sent me a link to, email, was an ultrasonic kind of thing where you had said, a new SIMA product. That's right. Where they had an ultrasonic rodent repellent device that actually hooked up to your car battery and could mount inside your car. And I thought, wow. And that won like a SIMA best product- Of course. And while I have tried this type of unit in the garage before, and which is just supposedly you plug it in the wall and it emits an ultrasonic sound that's supposed to keep the mice away, I don't know if I actually could endorse that and say yes it keeps the mice away 'cause I've seen mice in the shop. Where they dancing? Yeah, they were doing a jig. So you learn to expect what sounds they like. But no, I haven't, I don't know how well this, and the new product that's out, I'm intrigued by it, but again, I don't know if it's just another... We don't know, that's the thing about these repellents is that you hope that they work. The thing about traps is that you're able to see whether or not they trap live mice or kill them or whatever, and that's how you're able to determine they're functionality. The repellents, I mean, we're just gonna try them and hopefully they'll keep the mice away from the cars as well. And then finally one of those things you do, you can try the repellents, you can try to traps, you can try, but there's also some steps you can take to try to keep the mice, if they do get in your car, onto your car, you can try to keep them out of places. I know one of those places is the tail pipe. I bought a '72 GMC once, and the guy told me the engine ran beautiful, blah blah blah, and I got up to there and I said all right, and I trusted him, and everything else. And I hopped in the Jimmy and I just and it just cranked and cranked and cranked, and it would just not start. And then all of the sudden it just bam! Big back fire, and shooting out of the exhaust pipe were acorns and mouse nests and all this other stuff. And then of course it started after that. But the problem was is mice like dark deep crevices to build their nest and build their homes and everything else. But you can keep those mice out of the exhaust system using a product like steel wool. And I know I'm gonna get some crap from some guys here the guys who says hey I know mice that build nests out of steel wool, you're right, if you buy the 4/0 super fine steel wool, that stuff is just like cloth, you know? And yeah it becomes like a nesting material. So what you want to get is the real coarse steel wool. This is the stuff, it hurts hard enough just putting your hands on it, much less trying to bite into something like that. And then if you're in a real humid climate where you gotta worry, well I don't wanna have this big chunk of steel wool rusting somewhere in my car, you can always use bronze wool. Bronze wool won't rust and you get the super coarse stuff of bronze wool and it does the same trick. The mice don't like chewing on this either, but the advantage there being that if it does get humid or wet or anything else, you're not gonna have a big rust spot on the back of your tail pipe. Now we've got a question too, on the other end of the system, on the intake side, I've seen snorkel air filters, the factory ones, especially like muscle car eras, 60s era air filters with the snorkel on them that similarly the car's having performance issues, you open it up and then all the way all around the air filter, there's mouse droppings, there's the nest, there's the mice in there, and sticking some of this inside that air filter snorkel would probably be a fine way to keep them out of there. It's gonna be tough to, I know some guys try to seal up their garages and keep them out. I don't think that there's an effective way to do that, I don't think there's a building out there that can be completely mouse proof. The attractant can be used outside the- We have a question from a member here. Let's see. Some advice. Okay, Scott writes bait is an attractant so best used outside of the garage. Yeah, in best case scenarios, any time you're using bait or a trap, it's best to keep it out of the shop completely. So there's no reason for the mice to come in. Something it's not always practical. I mean if they are in. And keeping them protected. Plastic snap traps can be placed around the inside of the garage in the perimeter. Like to wonder Along the walls, like we discussed right. Yup, and work without bait. Yes they will. They can work without bait. Some of the snap traps, the spin traps. I know when I was working warehouse, they had a metal box with a hole through it, and when the mice went through the hole, it would flip them into a big empty box and then they'd take it outside and there'd be like 30 mouse carcasses in there. Wow impressive. Leave an 18-inch border around the garage as a rodent highway. I can't afford that much space. My garage is pretty full of stuff, if I try and move everything 18 inches away from the wall. Yeah, I understand what they're saying, that what he does in food manufacturing. Again, in the food manufacturing environment, you've got nothing but bait inside, so you wanna probably do as much as you can to prevent them from getting in. And with that, just one final word before we leave here tonight, you'll be tempting to wanna start your car over the course of the winter because it hasn't been driven in 6 months, maybe start it up, let it run for 10-15 minutes, don't do that. Try not to do it. Avoid the temptation to get the fluids warmed up, moved around, I know it sounds like it would be a good idea to exercise it a little and bring it up to temperature, but it's absolutely unnecessary and all it does it fire up that corrosion because of the condensation. Heat the air, the moisture will come out and condense inside the metal surfaces inside your car, and you're only encouraging the exact kind of corrosion that we're trying to prevent. Yup and with that we're gonna wrap it up. Thanks for joining us tonight. Hopefully we'll be back again next month. And looking forward to that. And thanks Scott for joining me tonight, It was great. It's been fun. And now we can go to work and get this car stored. Now, if you have any questions about any of the things that we discussed tonight, please send them in. Or if you have any ideas for future shows, let us know what you'd like to know about or something you'd like us to discuss, and we'll come back and share som information with you. Thank you and goodnight.