The Essential Winter Car Maintenance Checklist

Once you’ve familiarised yourself with how to drive safely in winter weather conditions and have followed our tips on preparing your car for winter driving, you should feel more confident to hit the roads this winter. But with car wheels, an engine and bodywork to look after, the winter driving checks don’t end there. Severe weather conditions can put pressure on your vehicle, therefore you should carry out a small amount of winter maintenance to keep your car running all season long.

Below is our winter vehicle maintenance checklist to remind you of the checks you should be carrying out regularly over the next few months. These quick and non-technical winter car checks should be carried out around once a week, and you’ll always be glad that you took the time. From car wheels to the engine, here are the key areas that you should keep an eye on throughout the winter months. 

How to Clean and Protect Wheels From Salt Damage

If you’re leaving the alloy wheels on your vehicle over the winter, you may need to take special care to clean them regularly, as a build-up of road salt may cause them to rust or corrode. It’s much easier to clean them often than remove large salt or road grit deposits, by which time some damage may have already been done. Our guide to cleaning alloy wheels will tell you everything you need to know about keeping your car’s wheels in top condition, no matter what the weather looks like outside.

Engine and Radiator Antifreeze

During the winter, you’ll need to pay attention to the antifreeze level in your vehicle’s radiator and ensure that it is kept within the minimum and maximum level to prevent your engine or radiator from freezing. It’s a good idea to keep it topped up, as the damage from a frozen engine or radiator is far more costly than a bottle of antifreeze.

Especially if you have a modern vehicle, you should check your manufacturer’s handbook or consult your local dealership if you aren’t sure which type of antifreeze to use. Newer vehicles tend to use a different type of antifreeze that lasts longer, so don’t mix this with the antifreeze typically used in older models.

Windscreen Wash

Keeping your windscreen washer fluid topped up during winter is crucial as your windscreen can quickly become dirty when driving on wet or snowy roads, and behind other cars. You will also need to mix the fluid with an amount of windscreen wash antifreeze so that it’s always available when you need it, especially in very low temperatures.

Consult your handbook to find out the proper concentration of antifreeze and windscreen wash, and make sure you are using appropriate windscreen wash antifreeze and not engine and radiator antifreeze, which can cause damage to the paintwork.

Wiper Blades

If you’ve ever wondered why people lift their windscreen wipers off their windscreens in the winter, it’s for a good reason: to prevent them from becoming frozen to the windscreen! Should this happen, you must never switch on the wipers in an attempt to ‘unstick’ them, or you may cause the rubber on the wipers to tear or become damaged. Instead, use a de-icer and an ice scraper to remove all of the ice and snow from your windscreen and your wiper blades.

You should also avoid using your windscreen wipers to remove frost, ice or heavy snow from your windscreen. They’re designed for clearing rain only; windscreen wipers will not be effective in removing frost or ice, which is stuck to the windscreen and can damage your wiper blades, and heavy snow will put pressure on the linkages and wiper blade motors and possibly cause these to break. As we have already mentioned, de-icer and ice scrapers should only be used when you need to clear your windscreen of ice or snow.

We’d also recommend checking the rubber on your windscreen wiper blades regularly during the winter to ensure that they have not become damaged, and replacing them right away if they have.

Car Battery

As we have discussed in our article on getting your vehicle ready for winter, car batteries are the main cause of winter breakdowns as they are put under great pressure through the extended use of headlights, blowers, and windscreen wipers. Therefore you should take care to not use any of these more than is necessary and help avoid a battery-related breakdown.

Bear in mind that batteries take more time to charge in low temperatures, so try to minimise how much you use blowers, lights and other battery-powered features of your vehicle when it is parked. Also, avoid leaving your vehicle unused for more than a few days over the winter, as your vehicle needs to run a charge through the battery.

Door Locks and Seals

When the temperatures plummet, especially overnight, it’s not uncommon for vehicle doors and locks to freeze and be impossible to budge. Give the locks and door hinges a precautionary squirt of WD40 regularly, especially if the weather forecast looks especially grim; it’s also a good idea to wipe the door seals with WD40 too to prevent them from damage.

Tyres and Tyre Pressure

You may have taken the wise step to fit your vehicle with LK Performance winter tyres - designed to improve your stopping distances in wet or icy conditions by up to 20%. However, no matter what types of tyres are on your vehicle, you should regularly check them during the winter months to ensure that they are at no less than the minimum tyre tread depth of 1.6mm (although a minimum of 2mm is recommended), that the tread is free from chunks of road salt, and that the tyres at the correct pressure.

The latter is important to pay special attention to as tyre pressure drops in cold weather – typically you should expect the tyres to lose 1psi of pressure per every 5-degree Celsius fall in temperature. Under-inflated tyres can affect their grip on the road, so if the temperatures drop suddenly and drastically, make sure you check your tyre pressure and re-inflate if necessary.