What more can I do to protect the car in my drive for the winter?
I cannot find a place to store my recently acquired 71 super beetle convertible.
I bought a good cover, and have a long enough asphalt drive to keep the Prius
on the street end of the drive and live on a one block street with low traffic and
salt use. What more can I do to protect it for the winter?
6 Answers
`Maybe get on of those metal free standing covers and get the optional side skirts. If you live in a high wind area you might be able to stake it to the ground. Make sure you use a battery float charger and fill the fuel tank and add some StaBil to the fuel, VW's don't like bad gas.
If you're not planning on running your Beetle at all during the winter months I'd remove the battery and store it inside. A heated place is best. But if that's not possible, simply disconnect the negative battery cable. There's no computers or anything drawing power after the ignition is turned off. Unless you have an aftermarket stereo or something like that. But fully charge the battery before putting it in storage. Change the oil too before you stop using the vehicle. As G A said, fill the gas tank and add fuel stabilizer. Premium grade fuel keeps better and having the tank full will prevent water condensation in the tank. If you think mice or other rodents might be a problem use mothballs to keep them away. Hope that helps! Jim
Thanks so much. Most of this I have done and I plan to get a battery tender and bring in the battery. Mothballs! Great idea. A friend had a mouse family under the spare for a while. Not sure how the mother handled the times the car went to town. I guess taping over the muffler pipes would be an idea too?
You're welcome. Glad to help! Taping over the tailpipes sounds like a good idea to keep rodents from moving in. I hadn't thought of that! Jim
Taping the tailpipes is a waste of time, rodents don’t like carbon smells from exhaust, however you do need to make sure the engine cold air tubes are properly connected so they can’t get into the engines air flow and from there they can get inside the car. Spreading mothballs inside the car and around on the ground will keep them away.
My drive has a slight slope from the road and water runs down during a rain. I thought I could park on a tarp and bring the upper end (rear of the car) of the tarp up and use bungees to attach it to the rear bumpers closing off the opening between the car and the drive. This would allow rain to go around the car or even under the tarp but not over the tarp and under the car. One side is a little higher so I could put a 2 x 4 under the tarp. Any reason this would not work?
