S18 is at school and not allowed to have car on campus. DH mentioned that it is bad for the car to just sit there for months. So, any ideas on how often it should be driven and/or how far?
We have a third car. Someone drives it to work or someplace…at least once a week.
You can get a trickle charger to put on it when you’re not driving a car for an extended period of time.
Probably easier to just use it a couple times a month, grocery run on Saturday or whatever.
One other thing to think about is oil changes. With my wife’s grandma we changed it every year. She drove less than a mile a week to church, and about the same a few times a week to the senior center. FIL is a car guy (I’m not) and he though annual was fine.
Drive it every week or 2, and make sure you drive it long enough for the engine to get fully warmed up.
Every 6-8 weeks, but when you do it should be about a minimum 20-30 min drive to allow the engine to come up to full operating temperature and burn off any condensation. In-between you might want to hook up a float charger.
We own cars on two continents and they get left unused very long periods of time, our stateside car sits in our garage for 10 months without use. My husband puts Stabl in the gas tank, amount as per directions on the bottle. He unhooks the battery and puts a trickle charger on in. We’ve had three different used cars in the states over 21 years living overseas, we’ve come back to needing a new battery twice, and a tire once. We do get the car serviced every summer. Our Asian cars sit the other two months unused. We just unhook the batteries and hope for the best. So you can go a fairly long time without driving it if you take some storage steps. It would probably be better if someone just drove it around a bit every couple of weeks, but that isn’t an option for us.
D sometimes has left her car for 2 months or more at a time and it started fine. Notmally, she tries to get someone to drive it every week or two, but only around the block.
I’m looking forward to dropping my son off at college in a few weeks and being able to drive our 3rd car (AKA the one DS normally drives) around. Since it gets literally twice the MPG my SUV does and I miss driving stick shift, I think that will become my daily driver. Instead of worrying how often I need to drive DS’ car to keep it running, maybe I should be worried how often I have to drive my SUV to keep it running.
That’s probably more harmful vs letting it sit then doing a single long drive every couple months. The majority of engine wear in a trip happens during the startup and cold-drive portion of the trip. Also a 5 minute drive likely doesn’t allow the battery to recharge the amount used for the startup. So overall I’d say driving around the block is doing more harm than good. Only if you plan to keep the car long-term though.
Yeah, I will tell her not to bother having it driven as it’s usualky Uber 2 months. She’s had the car for many years and plans to keep it a very long time. It is low mileage and well cared for.
We called our auto insurance company and told them our kid’s car (much older Volvo) is just “parked” for the year and won’t be used. They gave us a big credit on our insurance. We are disconnecting the car battery and parking it in the garage.
ANY MORE RELATED TIPS? Would it be common for old car with new battery to not start after a few weeks of sitting?
DD takes the train to work and rarely drives her car. A few months ago she called AAA for a jump and battery replacement. Now the new battery died, after being undriven a few weeks… Cold.20 degrees . The rest of the family is down helping right now. We are not sure if defective battery (I see a lot of AAA battery complaints online) or battery drain (which also seems to be common for old cars, based on Google search). They will jump the car. If it works they will drive to Autozone and consider purchasing a better battery.
It’s a 2003 Honda Civic from Grandma… with only 30K miles. It’s been a sweet deal of a car for her, so I am hoping it it just battery issue (or maybe parasitic drain), not pricey issue like alternator.
We drive our third car at least once a week and try to take it for a quick trip on the highway once in a while as well.
Cold weather does reduce the capacity of batteries, however sitting for 3 weeks shouldn’t cause the battery to become discharged. Was the car driven for at least 30 minutes after getting the new battery? New batteries just sit on the shelf slowly discharging, so by the time one gets installed in your car it’s almost certainly starting off pretty low.
Anyway for a car that’s rarely driven and experiences cold weather, it should probably be hooked up to a float charger. This is the one I use, and this particular brand is also rebranded/resold by BMW and Porsche. I got a new battery myself a couple months ago and immediately hooked it up to charge. The charger indicated the brand new battery was around 10-20% when I hooked it up.
Also your D might want to keep a portable jump starter in the trunk to save time waiting around for AAA. I keep one in my trunk and also gave one to my own D. Here’s an example of one, although I use a cheaper version.
Thanks @anomander! I actually had never heard of a portable jump starter. What a great idea.
Since the new battery (August?), the civic has had many local drives and also the 60 mile trip to our house about 4 times. Also I drove it for 2 weeks last month while she borrowed my minivan for moving, and it seemed to work fine (sometimes with a few days sitting in the garage… but warmer weather then).
If you are concerned about the battery losing charge over time of non-driving, you can get a trickle charger to connect to the battery while the car is not being used.
Thanks! Trickle charger sounds like a good idea for those that have a garage… But I think you’d need power source? (She parks at outdoor parking lot in and apartment complex).
HAPPY UPDATE: DH just called and send that the car started very quickly/easily with jumpstart. It probably helped that it is warmer today - 40 degree. There is only minimal current draw (I think he said under a milliamp vs 1 amp for comparison of trunk light). So we are less concerned about faulty components causing excess battery drain. We wonder if maybe there was a partially door causing dome light was stuck on. They bough a multimeter that DD/SIL can use for future analysis, if needed. And DH left the jumper cables there. But of course DD will need to make a point to drive the car more now, despite the new apartment being in a more walkable neighborhood.
OP not sure where you live but one thing you might want to also do is open up the hood every so often and check for mice. We have a car that doesn’t get driven much in the winter, it’s covered in the driveway, and we always end up with mice in it somewhere. And they can be destructive…
I mentioned a trickle charger back on the first page. 
Too bad she doesn’t have access to a power source, which is necessary.