Winter is the coldest cycle of the year and waiting around the corner. With winters come a lot of challenges that affect the smooth functioning of your car.
Challenges like salted streets, roads filled with heavy snow, slippery icy roads, dropping temperatures, and many more create a lot of challenges for your automobile.
Challenges in winters for your vehicle
But do all these challenges stop you from using your car? Especially when you have purchased a car of your choice through bad credit car finance in Ireland.
But we can be prepared in advance and plan so that the vehicle stays in good shape and smoother functioning during the winters. How do we do that? This article will help you with to be some of the car care tips to tackle temperature drops and keep your vehicle moving.
Few tips to make your vehicle for the winter season
- Preliminary Health Checklist
One of the simplest and most basic tips is to have your vehicle get a thorough check-up before the winter sets in.
Taking your car to an authorised service centre for a check-up before the season is highly recommended. While the regular check-up is recommended throughout the year, but it is more beneficial before harsh winters.
During extreme weather conditions, cars are prone to malfunctions. These basic checks are done to ensure that the car functions normally. This will help prevent or revert potential malfunctions later.
- Warming Up Your Car
During the harsh winters, you may need to warm up your vehicle when the temperature is low. It is individual of the necessary moves for winter car care.
Warming up your car means switching the engine on and keeping it that way for some time. This helps the engine to get warmed up before actual functioning.
Because of the low temperatures outside, the mechanical components of the machinery becomes prone to many malfunctions. Hence warming the components helps and reduces the wear and tear of components.
Also, during winter, the oil inside the engine all in the gearbox becomes thick and less viscous due to the low temperature outside. Warming up of engine helps increase the temperature of oil, which reduces the viscosity, making the oil thinner.
This then increases the lubrication between the different parts of the engine. Oil now spreads in every corner of the engine, making the engine thoroughly lubricated and reducing the chances of wear and tear.
Hence it is ideal for warming up your vehicle for a few minutes before you start moving.
- The Health of your Battery
You would understand that the summertime season is the worst villain weather for the battery of your cars. But even winter affects your battery in different ways.
If your car’s battery is low on charge or nearing depletion, there are good chances of the battery dying out in winters.
The distilled water, which is present inside the battery, is essential for chemical reactions happening inside. Due to low temperatures outside, often distilled water freezes and can cause permanent and irreplaceable damage to the battery cells.
Signs of damaged batteries are visible through improper functioning of electrical systems. It also causes car ignition troubles, flickering of lights and non-irregular functioning of inside cabin lights.
- Air Pressure in Tyres
Air pressure in the tyres is another essential point to take care of during cold weather. Like air expands when heated, in winters, air contracts when it cools down.
Hence in winters, when the temperatures drop, the air inside your tire contracts and reduces the tyre pressure. Therefore, it is recommended to get your tyre’s air pressure checked more often than you get it done usually.
Driving with low tire pressure will impact your driving and cause wear and tear to your tyres. Keeping the correct air pressure in the tyres is suitable for your driving as well as the health of your tyres.
- Headlights and Foglamps
Fog is another factor to be looked out for in winters apart from dropping temperatures. During the peak, winters frog becomes the most significant challenge during driving. It reduces your visibility to a greater extent. Hence, ensuring that your car’s lighting system is intact and ready for the foggy season is essential.
Not only your headlamps but your fog lamps also play a crucial role while driving through the fog. Most of the vehicles nowadays come preloaded with fog lamps in the front and rear fog lamps, too, in most of the models.
Even if you own an older model which does not have fog lamps, it is advisable to get the lamps fitted, especially in the fog affected areas.
- The Windshield
The windshield is an essential component in your vehicle, which gives you visibility of the road while driving. During the winter months, fog Mist, smoke etc., accumulates over your windshield glass.
This severely hampers your visibility and makes driving dangerous because of the temperature difference between inside and outside of the vehicle: the mist or the fog forms on the glass.
This can be minimized or removed by switching on the air conditioner and selecting the windscreen cleaning Mod which acts precisely like a dehumidifier inside the car.
- Antifreeze/Coolant Level
Last but not least tip on our list is to check the coolant levels. Coolant is the green-coloured liquid that keeps your engine cool, especially during the summers. It saves the engine from overheating and doing damage to the components.
However, the importance of coolant doesn’t reduce in the winter season. It works as antifreeze during the winter seasons. During low temperatures in winters, the coolant ensures that the engines don’t freeze or jam.
The fluid keeps regulating the temperature inside the engine to the optimum. Therefore, it is essential to check on your coolant levels and keep them to appropriate levels even during winters.
Conclusion
Vehicles are even more critical during winters when freezing cold outside and you need to travel.
Especially during harsh winters and snowfall, you cannot have your vehicle giving you issues and malfunctioning. With some tips and preventive actions, you can keep your car in good working condition even during the winters so that it doesn’t cause you problems.
