Fall is upon us really soon and our great sunny weather with hot tempertures and great visability will be replaced with rainy cold days with dark and low visibility conditions. This is when we must change our driving habits and adjust to the fall and winter driving style and leave more room between us and other cars in front of us.  We can only control so much while driving on the streets so taking extra precautions is always a great thing. By precautions I mean making sure your car is in good standing order for the fall and winter weather.

Things to check on your car for night time driving would be making sure your lights are all working including headlights, backup lights and especially brake lights. Changing light bulbs is usually quite easy and replacement bulbs can be bought at all auto parts stores for just a few dollars. With rain and snow hitting the streets you will want to make sure your tires are properly inflated to 32-34psi and that the tread is still sufficient enough to keep you from hydroplaning. If you can afford it a pair of snow tires is always a good thing and having all four is even better. Swapping summer tires with mags to steel rims with snow tires gives you more grip and saves the nice finish on your expensive aluminum or chrome wheels.

Wipers should be replaced once a year before the start of fall as this is when they will be used the most and give you the best visibility in heavy rain. Your wipers rubber insert tends to crack and degrade with extreme heat conditions during the summer so replacement is crucial. Some drivers forget this and use their wipers for 2 to 3 years till their visibity is so poor that they finally have no choice but replace them, but really why wait so long for such an important piece of your car during rainy season. Topping up our windshield wiper fluid is a good thing too as I know many drivers go through this very fast. Windshild wiper fluid is reasonibly cheap and usually costs less then $5 for a 4 liter bottle at most parts stores but don’t wait till you run out as gas stations charge a lot more. You can use a glass cleaner like windex to clean your windows from the inside so when they do fog up they are easier to see through until you defog them with your heater system.  

Under the hood you want to check things like engine oil, tranny oil if you have a automatic tranny, brake fluid, power steering fluid, and clutch fluid. If you haven’t replaced your radiator coolant in the last 3 years now is a good time to do it. Old fluid will cause premature water pump failure, poor cooling and will not hold up as well under sub zero tempertures. Depending on the area that you live make sure your antifreeze to water ratio is proper to give you the best cooling  and so it doesn’t freeze. Usually it’s a 50/50 mix or in really cold places 70% antifreeze and 30% water will keep it from freezing. 100% antifreeze is not really recommended as this will severely corrode your water pump, block and head.

During fall and winter try to keep your gas gauge above the 1/4 mark as running out of gas in the middle of a snow storm or a torrential down poor is not a happy experience. Traffic tends to be a lot more congested with lots more waiting and idling so having that gas gauge above the 1/4 mark will keep you at ease and less stressed.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!