Car Care 101: How Cold Weather Can Affect Your Car

With the fall season and cooler weather ahead, there’s always the possibility that our car may not start one morning. This can happen for a number of reasons. By now, we’ve covered certain topics that can help you figure out if there could be any other problems with your vehicle’s faltering. Today, we’re going to explore the impact weather can have on your vehicle, and a few winter car care tips.

How can weather affect my vehicle?

For starters, your car’s battery could possibly hate the cold. By nature, the combination of a battery with the wintry weather isn’t a great mix. This is because the chemicals in the battery, and your car, produce less electrical power. In certain environments, the current may drop drastically, which is when you’ll run into trouble.

Next up is the engine oil in your vehicle. Much like a car’s battery, engine oil doesn’t like the cold weather. When the cold sets in, the oil in your engine doesn’t flow well. This makes it a lot tougher for the liquid to move through parts. This, in turn, could also affect the performance of the battery.

Thirdly, fuel problems are a somewhat rare, but still possible occurrence. What does this mean? As an example, let’s say that, for some reason, there is some water in your fuel lines. When the cold temperature hits, the water in these lines will freeze, which will instantly block the flow of fuel. Though the car could probably turn on just fine, it will more than likely have a problem running on its own.

Lastly, this one goes out to all of you with old cars. Specifically, cars built in the mid-1980s. These vehicles most often used carburetors to mix small dosages of fuel with the air that flowed throughout the engine. Being the fragile instruments that they were, carburetors wouldn’t really work well in the cold weather since it would often get backed-up, or clogged, with ice.

If you’re looking for a new or used car or winter car care tips, visit our blog or your local Ed Payne McAllen car dealership to browse our latest selection of Chevy, Ford, Dodge and Fiat vehicles.