Getting your Car Winter Ready

With winter just around the corner, it’s a great time to be preparing your car for colder conditions. In doing so, you’ll be able to enjoy better performance out on the road, and save yourself from having to deal with sudden and unexpected costs. 5StarValetingSolutions offer interior car valeting and detailing services around London, Birmingham, Oxford, Swindon, Cheltenham, Gloucester and Bristol.

Let’s run through a few of the steps you might take to get your car ready for winter weather. 

Top up your coolant with antifreeze

Your coolant is there to keep your engine cool, which might not seem like such a problem during winter. But the coolant itself will need to be able to stay at the right viscosity even when the temperature has plummeted, which means that you’ll enjoy superior results if you top up the antifreeze levels. Getting a 50-50 mix of water and antifreeze will tend to work well. Bear in mind that pure water will expand when it gets to freezing temperatures, which is very bad news for the inside of your engine.

Put together a winter care kit

Ideally, you should be driving around with a first-aid kit to hand. But there are a few supplies which might not be included in a standard first-aid kit, which might prove invaluable if you should become stranded at the roadside in a blizzard. Warm socks, blankets, woolly hats and a few bars of chocolate might make all the difference. You should also include supplies that you’ll need to repair the car itself, like jumper cables.

Swap your tyres

If you’re doing a lot of driving, then it might make sense to switch your tyres out for winter ones. That way, you’ll get the kind of performance that matches with the conditions on the road. Winter tyres can be picked up online for a reasonable price. Whatever tyres you’re using, it might be worth checking the tread depth. While the legal minimum is 1.6mm, you’ll get better performance if your tyres offer more depth than that, especially during winter when the precipitation is higher and your grip on the road is going to be sketchier.

Check your lights

If you’ve been doing a lot of your driving in daylight conditions, then you might not have noticed a bulb going out. Be sure to check your lights regularly as the nights roll in. Keep a spare supply of bulbs, so that you can make a quick switch when necessary.

Check your battery

Batteries tend to fail during winter, because the temperature tends to slow down the chemical reactions which actually generate the energy. Make sure that you have a spare battery to hand, and that you’re able to install it. Once you know how, it’s an operation that can be performed relatively quickly and easily.