How to Care for a Classic Car (or Any Car You Don’t Daily Drive)

Owning a classic Corvette requires a Goldilocks approach; too much or too little attention can turn good intentions into wear and tear.

As I write this, I’m in my eighth week of working from home. Up until March of this year, my wife spent two hours each day crawling along gridlocked Los Angeles highways during her commute. Then her Caddillac sat for three weeks and I had to get the battery jumper to bring it back to life. Whoops. This is a car that’s never left us stranded before. But it’s also a car that doesn’t sit a lot, let alone for weeks at a time.

I should have known better.

You see, I’m a guy who has had the great fortune to 1) work from home, 2) own a few weekend toys, and 3) hold onto cars for a long time. I still own my first car, a 1987 Mercury Cougar XR-7 with around 46,000 original miles. (My parents wouldn’t let me buy a Mustang or a Corvette, which was probably a good idea.) And in my two decades of ownership, I’ve unfortunately made a lot of mistakes. Fortunately, the Cougar still looks great in many ways, but it also suffered a few unnecessary hardships.

Regardless, I hope my experiences of long-term caring for low-mileage cars can help with either your classic or a furloughed daily driver.

(NOTE: Before we dive in, this article isn’t meant for true museum or unicorn collector vehicles. Show cars will likely require additional and/or unique maintenance schedules, especially if they aren’t driven. These tips are more for cars that can collect miles each and every year.)

Remove Contaminants

Before your car sits for a long time, make sure to remove contaminants from every possible surface. Paint. Plastic. Undercarriage. Tires. Wheels. Leather seating. Winter salt is an obvious enemy, but brake dust, grease, food stains, and iron particles can reap havoc on your vehicle’s various finishes and surface areas. Do a full detail before your car sits.

Protect Every Surface

Along those lines, make sure to condition the leather, wax or seal the paint, and protect anything that you possibly can. And remember, don’t wash, wipe, or wax your car in swirling motion. (Mr. Miyagi was wrong!) For what it’s worth, I’ll be reviewing Avalon King ceramic coating soon, which should be an amazing way to lock in your classic’s shine for years to come.

If your car needs to sit untouched for months, you may need a gas stabilizer product to make sure moisture doesn’t build up over time. In my experience, keeping a tank full of premium gas is generally enough to keep excess water out, particularly if you start the car frequently (see below).

Skip Harsh Chemicals

If you’re like me, you enjoy making your car look factory new everywhere possible, including the engine bay. And while most OEMs hide modern engines under plastic coverings, please do me a favor and avoid heavy-duty full-strength chemicals (think Simple Green) when de-greasing your engine bay. They do a great job in the short term, but over 15-20 years, harsher chemicals, combined with heat, degrade things like wiring looms, little plastic clips, and OEM stickers. This is one of those things I learned the hard way, where the mistakes of my teenage years revealed themselves years later. Fortunately, my car’s wiring is okay, but it doesn’t look as mint as it could if I had used gentle soaps and de-greasers.

Avoid Touching the Paint

I understand the inclination to frequently wipe down a dusty car — and I’ve done it far too many times myself. Or to put a car cover on every time you’re done driving. But remember: every single time you touch your car’s paint, you have the chance of scratching the clear coat (or the paint itself if your car is old enough). Every single time.

The more you dry it. The more you detail it. The more you put a car cover on and off. You’re introducing small, medium, and/or large defects to your Corvette’s showroom shine.

The trick is to figure out ways to mitigate your paint’s exposure to, well, everything. Make sure all your detailing gear is clean. Use a multi-bucket method and lots of suds or foam when you wash. Don’t just wipe down with a duster or cloth, use a lot of detailing spray and switch to a new microfiber when each side becomes contaminated. And make sure you’re not using a dirty car cover, or taking it off multiple times each day.

The Sun is Your Enemy

I’ve lived in the rust belt and the sun belt, and while I’d take the sun belt over the rust belt any day in terms of maintaining a classic car, leaving a car out in the sun will fade and crack paint, and destroy plastics, vinyl, and leather surfaces.

The single best thing you can do for any car is put it in a garage or any building where the temperatures don’t get too cold or too hot. Second to that, I recommend a carport or a barn. In last place, a car cover (more on this below) will protect various surfaces from UV light (although not necessarily the heat) There are drawbacks to any garage-alternatives, but they are better than letting a car sit in direct sunlight and/or under a tree.

Car Cover Mistakes

Car covers protect paint when you don’t have a garage or permanent structural shade, but it’s also easy for a car cover to damage your clear coat. Especially if you live in a windy area. I typically recommend custom car covers for the way they hug your vehicle’s lines and curves.

Tying down and securing your car cover is also a must. Why? Because if you don’t tie it down, or if it’s too bulky, covers billow and flop around in the wind. And even if your car cover is perfectly clean, this could cause thousands of micro-abrasions and/or swirl marks. Finally, as mentioned above, a dirty cover will also destroy your paint, so make sure to follow the cover’s maintenance routine.

Moisture

While corrosion is a much more dire issue, check your vehicle(s) for any type of leaks. If you’ve got an aging seal or a failing evaporator drain or a forgotten open window, water will flow to low and hidden places and turn itself into mold. Make sure your classic Corvette is sealed tight.

Rodents

Less of an issue in a home garage (although anything’s possible), but if your car is under a carport, parked in a yard, or tucked away in the family barn, check for rodents and varments. They love to build nests under intakes and carburetors, behind trunk panels, in your glove box, and anywhere they can find. In addition to the issue of bacteria, dead animals, droppings — and THE SMELL — rodents chew on wires and will destroy your electrical system. Get a cat. Leave traps. Whatever you can do.

Battery Life

If your car sits for weeks or months at a time, you should either disconnect your battery or pickup a trickle charger. The latter is especially important for late-model Corvettes because of all the modern accessories. Between wireless keyfobs, security systems, On-star connected radios, and everything else, modern cars don’t sit as well as older cars. In my case, my ’80s and ’90s cars can sit for three weeks, no problem, but my wife’s 2013 Cadillac needs to be started every 7-8 days.

If you don’t own a trickle charger, it’s important to start up your car and drive it once a week. Depending on the model, you may be able to stretch it to two-three weeks, but weak batteries will only start so many times and you need to get that thing back to life.

Actually Drive Your Classic

There are many reasons why a car needs to sit for prolonged periods, but it’s very bad for your car. Trust me, I learned this the hard way last year where my 46,000-mile ’87 engine needed a slew of new gaskets. To be fair, Ford 302s are notorious for leaks thanks to its OEM cork gaskets. But still, NOT driving your Corvette is actually bad for it.

Try to take it out for a cruise every one-to-two weeks, weather permitting, and make sure you use every single thing in the car. Shift into every gear. Use the wipers. Drive it at a variety of speeds and loads. Make sure the brakes are still good. You don’t have to put hundreds of miles on it, either. 10 minutes each can help keep things lubricated and operating the way it was designed. And, if you can’t drive your car, let it idle up to proper operating temperature (so moisture doesn’t build up in your exhaust) and shift it in and out of gear.

Don’t Forget Your Air Conditioner

Although it should be obvious from the above, I wanted to specifically highlight your HVAC system as part of your routine classic car maintenance. Air Conditioners are simple, but delicate systems and, if they sit unused for too long, various seals will dry out. Best case, you’ll lose all of your refrigerant. Worst case, your compressor will explode and fill the entire system with shrapnel.

As such, my local air conditioning guy recommends running a car’s a/c system for about five minutes each week. (I would also recommend circulating the heat occasionally, as well, to make sure your heater core isn’t clogged.) Also worth mentioning, it’s a good idea to turn off your a/c a few minutes before turning off the car to help remove moisture from the evaporator core. Not all vehicles allow for this, mind you, but if you don’t, some a/c systems can acquire a musty odor.

Fluids

If a car sits for a long time or drives very few miles, it’s easy to forget fluid maintenance. But even low-mileage fluids have shelf lives and can build up moisture over time. As such, make sure to change your oil and filter at least once per year. And keep an eye on your other fluids — coolant, brake fluids, transmission fluid, and differential oil — and change those every five to 10 years, depending on each fluid’s recommended lifespan. If you don’t, your coolant could become corrosive and trash your radiator and other components, your transmission could start slipping, and/or your brakes could become spongy and dangerous.

Scheduled Maintenance

Along those lines, familiarize yourself with your Corvette’s owner’s manual. If you’re not putting thousands of miles on your classic each year, you may forget when it’s time to do specific service intervals for things like fluid flushes and cabin air filter replacement. For example, in the case of C7 and newer Corvettes, you have a direct injection engine, so it’s important to maintain GM’s recommended intervals for cleaning your intake. If you don’t, your intake and valves will get gunked up with oil and carbon and reduce performance. (A catch-can can help, of course, but without a fuel injector keeping your intake valve clean, you need to be careful.)

Tires

Much like fluids, tires have a shelf life. Especially if you’re running summer tires. They need to be driven or they’ll start to dry-rot and crack over time. I personally recommend replacing them every six to 10 years (depending on your tire compound), assuming they aren’t an OEM collector’s item. It’s also important to keep them aired up to OEM specs, rotate them annually (if possible), check your alignment every few years, and move the vehicle so you don’t get hard spots.

Final Thoughts

In thinking about these tips while writing, there’s one common theme to remember. Even if your car is a low-mileage garage queen, you need to operate it as the engineers intended. Clean it gently. Protect it. Drive it. And use every possible system.

It’s a bit of a Goldilocks approach, if you think about it. Drive a car too much you could run it into the ground (although Corvettes are particularly reliable). Conversely, if you don’t drive it enough, you’ll ruin it in different ways, like leaking seals and other gremlins. The trick, I suppose, is to give a low-mileage car as much attention as your daily driver. Sure, it won’t get the same mileage, but it still needs the same amount of care, vigilance, and routine maintenance.

What About You?

Do you have any other tips or suggestions for maintaining a classic or low-mileage car? Let us know HERE in our forums!

Photos: Corvette Forum Members

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