Tires and Cold Weather

emmanuelli;13499 wrote: Pardon my ignorance, why do you OVERFILL the tires if the car is going to sit for an extended period?

See cars.lovetoknow.com/Car_Winter_Storage

"Add Air to the Tires
If you won't be driving your car for several months, it's important to make sure storage will not harm your tires. During storage, your vehicle's weight will be directly pressing on the tires. Additional tire pressure will help distribute the burden more effectively.You can find the maximum tire pressure on the sidewalls of your tires or on any documentation you might have received when you bought them. Avoid overfilling the tires, as this too can cause damage."

cool, i have just not had a car that i have needed to store, its always been daily drivers. but its definitely good to know. thanks martin!

The original tires on BLU82 are not even CLOSE to round anymore, but still hold air quite well and look brand new (at about 2' or more anyway)... They have flat spotted very badly, which is probably a good thing, because if they were actually round you might be tempted to drive the car on them and then they would come apart from age/dry rot! That could be FAR WORSE than driving very slowly on square tires!

To Martin's point, if you have cash,,,,HA you can buy rounded tire cups that keep your tires from flat spotting, especially if you have cold weather.

-Another thing to add to Wally's post:

1. Start your car once per week in the winter. Let it idle for 5 minutes.

2. ALWAYS run your air conditioner! In Florida, I generally don't use the AC, I just roll down the windows. But I ALWAYS run the compressor for 5 minutes the first time I start the car that day. Why? Because the seal at the point where the shaft goes into the compressor needs lubrication. If you don't keep this seal lubricated, then the compressor will fail YEARS before it should!! The most common failure mode of an air conditioning compressor is this seal, and believe it or not, an AC compressor in Florida will last TWICE as long in general as one on a Michigan registered car. Reason? The Michigan car for 7 months per year doesn't have its AC compressor running, so the seal looses all its lube. On startup, for a few seconds there is metal to metal contact, and eventually this seal wears and leaks out all the freon. In Florida this doesn't happen, so despite the vastly larger number of hours on the unit, they last longer down here.

N

There are quite a few folks who disagree with short-time running an engine during hibernation.

Lots of water/acid going into the oil and the exhaust system...