What should I do for my beloved car?

July 2, 2009 4:51 PM

Recommended maintenance for car after winter storage?

I just took my car out of storage after nine months out of the country. While I was away, my brother stored my 2007 Nissan Sentra in his garage in Seattle, Washington. Just before I left, I changed the oil and checked the tire pressure, but I also neglected to do a bunch of other important things that I didn't know about at the time. For instance, I did not fill up the tank with premium gas (or add fuel stabilizer) and I didn't disconnect the battery (although my brother claims he started the car every few weeks). If there was anything else I was supposed to do, I didn't do it. I'm sorry, car! I just drove it around for the first time today (to Jiffy Lube to change the oil), and it seems to be running fine so far, although the tire pressure light is on (even after the Jiffy Lube guys filled up the tires).

I'm planning on driving the car cross country in a few weeks and I want to get the car in as good of shape as possible. I checked old posts here and googled around, but I haven't seen much that addresses newish cars. Is there anything I can do to reverse the potential damage I caused my car by storing it improperly? Or even a way to find out whether I have caused it any damage? Thank you.

posted by mustard seeds to travel & transportation (3 comments total)

Start with this similar question, asked just yesterday.
posted by chrisamiller at 6:08 PM on July 2

Nooooo, I'm so sorry. I promise I did check. However, I still want to know if I have doomed my new(-ish. Still under 20,000 miles) car to a life of infirmity because of my sketchy storage. Or if it is possible to reverse the rust and/or water damage that may have occurred.
posted by mustard seeds at 6:45 PM on July 2

Put some fresh gas (or gas treatment) in and drive it like you stole it for a couple days. If there are any problems, they'll pop right up.
Likely, you probably didn't do any damage. There's a military base near my shop and a lot of the cars that come through spend most of their lives in storage (like, cars from 2003 that only have 16,000 miles on them). They're generally in pretty good shape, aside from occasional tire and belt dry rot and they sit for much longer periods of time than your car did over the winter.
As far as rust or water damage goes, unless your car spent time partially submerged in water, there's virtually no damage.

As far as you tire pressure goes, double check that the pressure matches the specs per the plaque on the door jam. If they're set correctly, there's usually a button somewhere on the dash or console that says something like set or store tire pressures. Tire pressure monitoring generally doesn't look at a specific pressure as much as it looks for a percentage lost over X amount of time. In some cases, you've got to assign what "normal" is.

Don't worry too much about this. Just take your car out for a good flog and stretch its legs a little and everything will be fine.
posted by Jon-o at 7:57 PM on July 2