Classic cars are a beautiful sight to behold. There’s nothing quite comparable to the gleam of sunlight bouncing off the chrome on a properly waxed ‘70s Plymouth or Mustang. However, this doesn’t just happen by chance; the cars need to be kept in top condition, to preserve their luster. And yes, you need to do more than just park it safely in your garage. In this article, we examine a few tips for keeping your car in pristine condition.
Tips to keep your classic car in good condition
- Schedule regular maintenance
If you intend to extend the lifespan of your classic car as much as possible, you have to develop a schedule for maintaining its body, engine, and other parts. Unlike regular cars, which are usually fresh off the assembly line, classic cars can require a lot of attention. So, while you can afford to let your Highlander run for 1 extra month without an oil change, such behavior with classic cars could end with it requiring expensive repairs.
Many people who own classic cars are hobby mechanics and probably spend every other Saturday bent over the hood of their vehicle. However, if you’re in this class, you shouldn’t think that this precludes you from having to have professionals look at your car now and then. It’s even more important so that the professionals can catch anything that you might have overlooked.
- Clean it often
Don’t be one of those people who let dirt get caked onto the classic Mustang’s chrome plating. If someone walks up to you wearing Gucci athleisure that’s obviously expensive, but really dirty, what would be your first opinion about them? Exactly! That’s how you’d look with a dirty classic car.
But, even more importantly, dirt is bad for your car’s health. All of the components of the murk – salt, grime, mud, sand, and other elements – can cause real damage to your car. Salt, for example, can get under the paint on your car’s exterior, and combine with the moisture in the dirt to cause the metal to rust. So, it is vital that you not only clean your car often but that you also polish and wax it, to seal and protect its exterior.
- Drive it often
The worst thing that you can do to a classic car is to leave it sitting in your garage without driving. Of course, these things can be quite expensive, and you instinctively want to keep them from road damage. Regardless, classic cars are machines; and like all other machinery with moving parts, cars need to run often to keep the mechanical parts moving properly. It’s just like how we need to exercise and visit the gym regularly to keep our body systems working optimally.
Also, regularly driving your classic allows you to detect problems, early on, before they metastasize, requiring expensive repairs, or worse – rendering your car unserviceable for life. Besides, where is the fun in owning a classic car, if it just sits in your garage all year long? You need to take it for a spin, and let other drivers in traffic gawk at your car’s awesomeness from inside their basic Corollas.
However, also note that classic cars are not off-roaders. Don’t take your car on any rough roads. This is to prevent the bumps on the roads from devastating your vehicle’s suspension, or flying sediments from ruining your car’s paint job.
- Store it properly
Admittedly, it might be impossible to drive your classic car through the year. For example, you may not want to during the winter, since the cold and wet weather makes the cars especially susceptible to rust and moisture damage. Also, the salt used to melt snow on roads during winter can accelerate rust.
Whatever your reasons are, if you need to store your car, you should do it the right way. Of course, it’s just not enough to leave it parked in your garage. There are companies that provide specialized services for storing your cars in controlled climatic conditions. However, if you cannot afford that, you can as well just leave it in your garage – but well covered.
Using a car cover would help protect the car from dust, rain, snow, and direct sunlight, and would keep its temperature fairly constant and warm. You should also take action to protect it from rodents and insects.
- Take care of the battery
Usually, when cars are left to sit for a long while, their batteries get dead. When this happens, the common fix is to jumpstart the car. Jumpstarting may work quite fine with regular cars, but can be quite damaging for classic cars – considering that their electrical systems are usually quite old, and fragile. And you don’t want to have to buy a new battery every summer when you bring your car out of storage.
To mitigate this, you may want to buy a trickle charger to preserve the health of your battery. After all, that single purchase is much better than permanent damage to your car or having to buy new batteries ever so often.
Final words
Classic cars are very nice to own – they turn heads, and make you a member of an exclusive community of motorheads. However, owning one can get real nasty and expensive real quick if you don’t maintain it in great condition. With the tips that we have listed here, we hope that you now know better about how to treat your precious hunk of metal. Also, if you’re looking for the greatest deals on classic cars in the market, head over to the Dyler website now.
