I used to drive my car each day - but now it will be sitting idle apart from a short run for the weekly shop, so I thought I'd look up what to do if the car was idle for a period.
Anyone here a mechanic and/or has any other advice (non abusive!) would be appreciated.
Cars/driving is my other main interest. Can you take a more 'scenic' route to the weekly shop or head somewhere else for a change just so it gets a longer run, chance to get fully up to temperature, use the brakes a bit etc.?
As a rule, cars don't like sitting for long periods and they don't like short journeys.
I personally would also just leave the car in gear and not use the handbrake if it's sitting for a week at a time. Handbrakes can get sticky.
This sort of stuff is exacerbated on older cars though in my experience.
For my sins, among my many talents I'm a qualified automotive technician. If you are using it once a week, it is not 'laid-up'. That relates to things like classic cars which are being put into storage for 6 months or more. With a modern car, six months, at worst check tyre pressures and charge the battery. Being driven weekly, no problem.
Our new car cuts out when we stop at junctions or in traffic queues then starts up as we lift the foot off the brake pedal. It's a fuel saving and ecology/environmental thing which we could opt not to use but we haven't.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
Basically. If your car battery is good, then a couple of months standing idle and the car should still turn over and start. If in doubt. Take a chance. Pop out and startup. Let the engine run/idle for a while. Avoid sudden excessive blasts on the throttle. This will increase engine wear, as time is needed for the oil etc to be circulated around the engine. Be patient and let the engine idle. If you are able to take a short drive. In most cases a gentle drive say twnty miles and your battery should be fully charged.
I had thought about taking the long way home from the supermarket each week as the round trip is probably no more than 5 miles normally.
I need to check my manual as well, as I have a diesel (boooooo hiiiiisssssssss I know) and from what I can tell short trips are not good for the DPF (a particle filter) - but I think mine is so old, it doesn't have one anyway (and I don't have any mechanism or indicators on the dash for recharging it).
As my supermarket has an Argos, I think I'll get a trickle charger anyway - we used to have a charger in the garage, but I think I only ever used it once and it ended up being covered in rust and was binned years ago. I may just double check though - if I can fight my way through the cobwebs....
I worked in a garage for a couple of years not as a mechanic but more of a gofer, the number of diesel car that they had in because the particulate filter was blocked because the engine didn't run hot enough for long enough was an eye opener to me, I would think twice about buying a diesel car when I only do about 3000 miles/year. On another note I got the car out of the garage the other day not because I was going anywhere just because I wanted to get into the garage, when I put it away I closed the door to hear a sound like glass bottles rolling together, strange I thought there aren't any bottles in here so I opened the door looked at the drive and no there weren't any bottles so I closed the door started the engine and checked the drivers side mirror, thought that looks dark all of a sudden and realised that the mirror glass had fallen out onto the drive and smashed, how strange it had been alright for 11 years through hard frost and baking heat and yet today it decides to fall out, when I checked the back of the mirror glass there appeared to be no sign of glue on it very strange and yet when I googled it not that uncommon.
I had a thought about the reduced mileage and then Googled it - and saw a couple of issues with the DPF (and the effect a problem with the DPF could have on a Turbo - which my car has got) - and thought I'd see if anyone was offering advice about what you should now do if your car was doing vastly limited mileage - and if there were any other parts of the engine/car that may be affected that I wasn't aware of. Not an awful lot there that I saw - so maybe no great shakes and simple checks that I would normally do (oil,water, tyres - and battery) will suffice for me.
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As a rule, cars don't like sitting for long periods and they don't like short journeys.
I personally would also just leave the car in gear and not use the handbrake if it's sitting for a week at a time. Handbrakes can get sticky.
This sort of stuff is exacerbated on older cars though in my experience.
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/health/gorleston-man-gives-nissan-primera-away-to-nhs-worker-1-6585780
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Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Our new car cuts out when we stop at junctions or in traffic queues then starts up as we lift the foot off the brake pedal. It's a fuel saving and ecology/environmental thing which we could opt not to use but we haven't.
On another note I got the car out of the garage the other day not because I was going anywhere just because I wanted to get into the garage, when I put it away I closed the door to hear a sound like glass bottles rolling together, strange I thought there aren't any bottles in here so I opened the door looked at the drive and no there weren't any bottles so I closed the door started the engine and checked the drivers side mirror, thought that looks dark all of a sudden and realised that the mirror glass had fallen out onto the drive and smashed, how strange it had been alright for 11 years through hard frost and baking heat and yet today it decides to fall out, when I checked the back of the mirror glass there appeared to be no sign of glue on it very strange and yet when I googled it not that uncommon.