Guest post: Tips for Long-term Car Storage
If for whatever reason you won’t be using your car for months and months on end – perhaps you are travelling overseas, or you’ve undergone major surgery and won’t be able to drive safely for a while – car storage is the way to go. Here are some essential planning tips on how to store your car long-term.
Deciding on a Storage Destination
Obviously, the location in which you decide you store your car all depends on how long you plan to leave it unused. If you’re only going to be away a few days, storing your car in a securely locked garage such as your own wouldn’t be a concept too difficult to grasp, however in most cases where your absence exceeds a month or so, a storage facility would be ideal. Self-storage companies such as Fort Knox specialise in any storage scenario conceivable to an average human mind, one being the placement of vehicles in storage units. Storing your car in something like this would be ideal, as it would be safeguarded from the possibility of sun damage, or potential rodents that might be lurking around your garage.
Conditioning Your Car For the Big Move
Take your car in for servicing to make sure everything is running smoothly and will continue to do so when you are ready to reclaim it. But before you go as far as that even, you’ll want to clean the car inside and out. This means oiling all the hinges, waxing the outside, washing it down and dusting it from top to bottom. If you’re stretching these chores out over the course of days, or even weeks, make sure you dust right before covering the car, as a way of prevent additional dust particles from finding their way in. You might also want to open the windows ever so slightly, particularly if your car is being stored outside for the sun to grill, or in a tight and stuffy space.
Consider charging your car battery and topping it up with fuel before sending it off to be stored; if it’s been a while since you’ve sped down the highway with the radio turned up for the entire hemisphere to hear and love, you’ll want to be able to use it as soon as possible. It’s also important that you are fully covered by your current insurance policy, and that you renew your registration if you need to during that time. Unlike a bike, which can be positioned on its side, a car has no option other than to remain on its feet, day and night. With this in mind, it might be worth slightly deflating your car tires to avoid the risk of them failing on you when you return.
The overall motivation for going to all this effort is to feel that you are leaving your car in the best condition possible and in the safest of hands. This way you are not only ridding your mind of angst during your leave, you will being returning to your car as if you never left it, or as if your car was stolen and returned several months later in better condition than before it was stolen.
