This past Sunday I drove my '88 Trans Am about 50 miles from home to where I store it for the winter. The is my 35th year of winter storage. Hard to believe how the years have flown. This is one of the later dates that I've taken my car in for storage. Often times it is late October or the first weekend in November. On my way I stopped to take a few photos.

 

One of the best looking cars on the planet

 

You are too kind. Thanks!

 

It's tough to put them away and admit you've driven them for the last time this season.

 

Fortunately for me, I live in central Texas, and although my cars are garaged and covered, I drive them year round.

 

That car IS totally awesome looking. Beautiful!

But....


Whoa, whoa, WHOA!! .....where's the 1sq foot carpet pieces under each tire!?? That thing ain't ready for "winter storage"! You obviously don't care about that car at all!




J/k....and making fun of peoples "storage religion" from other forums.

 

I used to park mine at a nearby fairgrounds in their big display building. Was $65 for the winter and really clean dry storage. They had a removal day and that was like a pretty big car show there, lots or really cool cars, and fun to watch people try to get them running after 4 months. You guys down south really have it made in that respect.

 

You are right about not ready for storage. For the first 8 or 10 years I would put the car up on blocks to keep the weight off the suspension, but after moving on to different storage locations this was so convenient to do. As long as I have a dry location with a concrete floor I feel pretty good. The main thing to worry about is mice. I prescribe to the dryer sheet myth, but knock-on-wood it has worked for me. I'll get the car back out in late April or early May.

 

That is still common in Wisconsin. The fair grounds make a few bucks and the storage is generally the cheapest option, but you have to get the car there and then remove it on the prescribed days.

 

Great looking cars. I was in Dallas back in late February/early March when they had that ice storm. Not a good time to be driving a third gen on these roads. Not salt trucks in Texas to keep the ice off the roads. LOL

 

Ha ha ha....I was joking about the carpet squares. And the jacking/storage on wood blocks. "You know, leaving your shocks (and struts, in this case) fully extended is going to cause the shock rods to rust!!"

Change the oil, fill the gas tank, park it. For mice, forget about the moth *****, the dryer sheets and other un-knowns, use something that WORKS: Use Decon.

 

I live about 65 miles south of Fort Worth. I have a fairly large garage. I keep my 94 in there because I use it more often, my wife's Saturn Sky Roadster that I just bought her for our 35th Wedding Anniversary, my Gator, and space for my "shop." A few years back, I bought a vacant steel building about a mile down the road that used to be a drive thru beer barn, and I keep the 91 there, along with a 71 Cheyenne Shortbed, my boat when it isn't in the marina, and a PWC. I use the 30 foot cooler to store auto parts and equipment. Our 3 DDs stay outside.

You were definitely in Texas the worst part of the year. Statistically, the worst weather is 2 weeks in February.....but I live by this motto: No Sun, No Stars, No Cars.

 

Decon is not an option for people with pets. Mice will literally move it around and drop it somewhere else. And a pet can die if they eat a dead mouse full of Decon.

My wife uses a mint spray on the tires of our RV. Burns the sinuses of rodents and repels QwkTrips too. That stuff is STRONG. Has to be applied frequently though. Mint grown out west works a lot better than midwest or eastern US.

Mice also find petroleum products repulsive. Previous owner of my RV soaked cotton ***** with mint and piled it up on the tires, and rubbed 303 leather cleaner on many surfaces inside the vehicle. Parked the RV outside with woods all around and never had a mouse. That's quite amazing if you know how much mice love getting into RV's. Keeping mice out of a car is 100x easier than keeping mice out of an RV.

I have used pet safe VoleX on voles in my yard. Wipes out the entire population. I'm not sure how well the sister product MouseX works (voles eat different than mice).

 

That might be a good point. Never had that issue -even though we have pets, but have had it get rid of the mice, quick. But, it's a good thing to consider.

 

The storage unit my Chrysler has been banished to since the garage fire is almost entirely ringed in rat sized glue pads. I buy some every time I'm at the store, and when I visit it every few weeks I change out the pads with critters, or more generally, the ones that have gotten too dusty to be effective anymore. I sprinkle a granular repellent outside the door of the unit, and a spray a liquid version around the perimeter inside. Interior, trunk and engine compartment of the car are lined with a generous amount of drier sheets that I change 3 or 4 times a year. In two years, I've probably caught 6-8 mice on the glue pads. None in the car though, thank God.

I hope to have her back home soon.

 

Well, it appears that the danger is much lower than the original post made it seem to me:

ONE SOURCE"the average 20-pound dog would need to consume 1.6 to 96 ounces of the most common baits, depending on its species and a few other factors. While that is a vast spectrum, it is still more than most dogs will consume via secondary poisoning. However, it is still a risk, especially with smaller dogs. "


ANOTHER...

• Your pet would need to consume about 20% of its body weight in rodenticides in order to ingest a fatal amount, which is far more than the average amount of bait in a residential home
  
• Your pet would need to repeatedly consume large quantities of poisoned rodent carcasses over a period of several days to be negatively affected by secondary poisoning
  

So, on the rare occasion that I need it, I'll probably keep using Decon, b/c it works, and it works "Right now".

 

My wife is a veterinarian.

That article isn't true. Rodenticides come in many varieties, some are weaker, some are very potent.

Secondary poisoning is less of a problem. Bigger concern is mice move that stuff around and your dog can find it. It smells and tastes sweet and is enticing to dogs. A lot of times owners don't know their dogs ate it until symptoms and by then it could be too late. It's just not worth the risk.

Cats are less likely to eat it but when they do you just find them dead and the owners don't know why.

 

Huh. Which article?

There are a bunch more that essentially say the same thing, even ones by veterinarian based websites.

I hear steel wool works.....

 

Life is full of decisions.

 

That is true. I don't need to decide, however; I'm partial to the stuff that works.

It's a great point that you brought up; something people should be cognizant of, for sure.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Trying to do my rear drum brakes. I can handle the cold for an hour or so. I am an old man and Winter is hard! 83 Camaro sport Coupe

 

That's rough. My hands to last long when it's really cold without gloves. Mechanics work gloves help. Hopefully you don't have to do rear wheel cylinders. I'm not a fan of those either.

 

Even when I lived in Pittsburgh, I drove my 3rd gens year-round. I don't want to give up driving them, and I think it's just a good idea to keep old cars. just like aging bodies, moving. I'd pick days where the roads were mostly clean, and I'd wash the car often to get any salt residue off the car.

I'm happy to be in South Carolina now, where "winter" means that you get the occasional day where it doesn't get to 50 degrees.

 

You guys down south sure have it made when it comes to keeping rust free vehicles. See trucks and cars with 300k miles with zero body rust and only surface rust underneath, even Dodge Rams. Those bed sides rust through in 2 or 3 years up here in the snow belt.

 

It seems great for cars to me, although some people say the salt air is tough on them. Personally, I don't think that's true. You see a lot of older cars here, and not just collectibles. A lot of very old, very ordinary Accords, Tauruses, Equinoxes, and Camrys are on the road and look good here.

It seemed like in the Pittsburgh area, they used a tremendous amount of salt. A little snow, and they'd dump the salt. Even on dry, clear days, I'd come home with my cars bleached white. Then even in a mild winter, by February you'd see a news story saying that PennDOT was running out of salt. No wonder. They put down one salt rock for each flake that falls.

 

Resurrecting this older thread, and now that the winter storage season is nearly upon us in the northern hemisphere, I found an interesting bit of somewhat un-scientific experiences using fuel stabilizers for long term storage. This guy's video shows some of what some products can do, and most interesting is what happened to metal and rubber during storage.


I can say that my experience with Sta-Bil along with about 100:1 2-cycle oil has worked well for me over the past quarter century with cars, tractors, boats, and outdoor equipment. I think I still have some 1999 fuel in at least one of those vehicles, and I start it periodically just to keep oil pumping and rings from sticking.

 

1999 fuel!?! ? Wow! What’s the story with that?

I’ve been using Seafoam as a stabilizer for many years, but have concluded it’s not the best stabilizer and have switched to something else.

 

I have a '96 Impala that has just a tick over 4,100 miles, and I haven't emptied the tank since 1999. I have added a few gallons of fresh low-octane fuel every couple years to run it to operating temperature, but I suspect some of the fuel is 20+ years old. It's probably not the best scenario, but the EVAP system is sound and it fires up instantly on a fresh battery.

 

Was the original fuel pure gas or an E10 blend?

 

Garage is 65°, 1 t top off for humidity, battery disco’d. No cover, so when I have a beer in the garage I can see the car.

 

Just put my car away a few weeks ago and forgot to put stabilizer in the tank and run it into the carb. I'm hoping for a smooth start come April lol

 

Ive only used stabil once, the year I did it swelled the acc pump. My mechanic said don’t use that crap.