It’s important to take good care of your car, especially in a harsh season like winter. Doing this can help you travel safely and be prepared for anything while you’re on the road. Here are five car care tips that should enable you to prepare adequately for winter and get through the season without any accidents.
1. Lubricate the Window Tracks
When freezing water seeps into your vehicle’s window tracks, it can result in a dragging window every time you try opening it. This has the potential to damage your window’s regulator cables and call for an expensive fix. To avoid this, you should use dry Teflon spray lubricant or spray silicone to lubricate the window tracks. When you do this, you can be sure that your windows will operate optimally throughout winter. While you won’t want to open your windows a lot in the biting cold anyway, it’s important to make sure that they operate well for the sake of maintaining a comfortable temperature in the car. This is because you’ll lose a considerable amount of heat through them if they can’t get shut the whole way. This is similar to the way you can lose between 25% and 30% of the warm air via a drafty window in the home. Your car windows aren’t much different!
2. Get Winter Wiper Blades
In winter, it’s not enough to make sure that your wiper blades are in good condition. You also need to make sure that you’ve replaced your regular wiper blades with winter wiper blades. This is important to do because regular wiper blades can get packed with snow and become essentially ineffective. It’s important to make sure you have clear vision while driving if the fact that 30% of all insurance claims happen to be windshields is anything to go by. Pair a whole windshield with the right wiper blades and you’ll improve your road safety in winter.
3. Test the Battery
Your car’s battery provides the energy you need to start your car and do a number of other things, such as keeping the lights on. It’s important to use a kit to check the condition of your battery so that you know whether you need to get another one or not. Don’t take chances with a compromised battery, but replace it right away. Also, check to see if the terminals are clean and free of buildup which can cause hard starts in winter’s cold.
4. Put Together an Emergency Kit
Don’t ignore packing a basic winter road survival kit because you never know what may happen while you travel in winter. This kit should have an LED flashlight, a candle-powered heater, a pen and notepad, jumper cables, a shovel, and a collection of first-aid essentials. This will help you get yourself and any passengers you may have out of a number of situations. Remember that every single year, there was an average of 400,000 auto crashes in Florida. This shows just how frequent crashes are and should motivate you to stay prepared for anything.
5. Check Your Tires
Last but not least, you need to make sure that your tires have the right pressure and tread depth before you get on the road in winter. If possible, get winter tires for your car to make sure you have the traction that you need and there will be a lower chance of getting stuck. You should also carry a spare tire at all times and ensure that it has good pressure so you can use it if you need it.
Take note of these five car care tips for winter so that you can drive more securely. It’s a short enough checklist that you can get done fast and easily, so don’t ignore it. These tips could save you a future headache.