Making sure your car is serviced regularly is a great way to ward off the inconvenience and stress of a breakdown. But during the winter months, frost, ice, heavy rain and snow can all put additional stresses on your vehicle’s performance. As well as seeking routine care and attention from trained mechanics, there are other ways you can prevent your car from malfunctioning or avoid accidents in the winter. Here, we list just some of the ways you can prepare.

Winter Checks for Your Car

• Poor visibility is one of the major causes of accidents in bad weather. Check your windscreen wipers and have the blades – or the whole wiper – replaced if they’re not clearing your windscreen efficiently. Also, make sure you’re carrying a healthy stock of de-icer and have an ice scraper to hand.
• Top up all the car’s fluids. You should have good levels of screen wash, especially in winter when other vehicles’ tyres kick up lots of road salt and grime. Also, check your antifreeze. This will prevent the water in the engine’s cooling system from freezing. Make sure engine oil and brake, clutch and power steering fluids are all at the optimum levels, particularly before setting off on a long journey. If you don’t know how to do this, your local garage can help.
• Test your exterior lights. You must make sure you’re visible to other road users and pedestrians while the nights are longer and darker, for your own safety and theirs too. In winter’s wet conditions, it’s easy for grime, debris and road salt to accumulate on the glass, so clean them frequently to keep their beams bright. It’s also easy to miss a blown bulb, so have a friend or family member walk round the car while you test each light in turn, and have broken bulbs replaced as soon as possible.
• Have your car battery checked. Not only does cold weather reduce the power your battery holds and delivers, it also tends to make the engine have to work harder to turn over. While car batteries do live longer than three years if well-maintained, if yours hasn’t been looked at during this period, it’s a good idea to have it tested and make sure it’s still working at peak performance. Even the cost of a replacement battery is better than breaking down at the roadside in the dark and the cold!
• Ask your garage to check your tyres for wear and damage, and even consider fitting a special set for winter if you live in an area that habitually suffers from heavy snow or frosty conditions!

Be Prepared

There’s nothing more miserable than breaking down when the weather is poor. Even if you’ve prepared in all the ways above and are up-to-date with your vehicle servicing, there’s still a chance you could end up on the roadside waiting for help. Make sure you’re prepared by storing warm clothes and blankets, your mobile phone charger, a high vis jacket and a torch, as a minimum, before you set out.

If you need help preparing your car for winter this year, why not ask our team at Wimborne Tyres & Auto Centre Ltd? We’d be pleased to assist.