4 Things Silently Killing Your Vintage Car
You click the ignition key one detent to the right. A quick twitch of the right foot to tickle the accelerator pump and set the choke. Another touch on the key and . . .
Nothing.
What should be a crescendo of eight trumpets playing the V-8 version of taps and stirring the car person’s soul awake is instead the painful silence punctuated by the soft click of the ignition cylinder returning to the off position. Wake up, it’s just a nightmare.
At least, for now it is. It could happen to you, though. Nature is a cruel mistress who is conspiring against us and our cars and doing so both vigorously and silently. Here are four main offenders to keep your eye on, since your ears aren’t going to help.
The Garage Fridge
Current moving around inside an electric motor—like the compressor of a refrigerator—produces ozone, and that combined with sunlight can age tires and other rubber parts very rapidly. Replacing dry-rotted but otherwise fine parts gets expensive and annoying very quickly. If you are like me and aren’t ready to give up the fridge or freezer, focus on keeping sunlight away from your vintage ride.
Corrosion
Deep inside your car, there is a war being waged between materials and nature. Hate to break it to you, but nature always wins. That means rust and other types of corrosion are leeching into the metals and connections that not only shape your car but also make it functional and easily serviceable. For every joke about “hearing a car rust” there are five cars that rusted away before the owner even noticed.
Being Parked
Sitting is the last thing cars were designed to do. All of the silent killers, and a few of the noisy ones, attack when the car is laying dormant. These things gain ground while the car is waiting, only for us to claw back some ground with our occasional drives. Oil coatings slip off and leave dry-start conditions inside an engine that could drive an owner to doing the extra work of priming an engine just to go driving. That’s only for those who are both aware and care enough to take that action. For many, ignorance is bliss when turning the ignition key and hearing the rumble through the exhaust pipes.
Friction
Fine, I’ll concede this one is not always silent, but with or without noise, excess friction is making your vintage car smaller with every drive. I’m not even talking about the intentional friction from brake or clutch lining, but instead about the metal-to-metal contact that was never designed to be that way. Grease and oil are subject to gravity just like us, so keeping oil and grease in the right spot is a never-ending task as they silently slide and ooze past seals and gaskets. One small drop on the garage floor might not seem like a big deal but over time can mean lots of very worn-out parts that seemingly happened out of nowhere.
84 and trying to finish a three year resto mod of a 68 El Camino, two types of cancer , heart stents a ablation. But bound and determined to finish it for my Son’s
I would add Ethanol as one of the worst enemies of any internal combustion engine that sits for any length of time. Big time water collector! Enjoyed all the comments. Drive and enjoy them while you can.
This is very informative. Thank you! I had no idea about the garage fridge. We have an ice maker and a deep freeze in our garage. 🙁
My 1996 LT 4 Corvette has less than 25,000 miles on the odometer. I had to replace the water pump, due to a leaky seal. It’s right above the Opti-spark distributor. Hard to believe it failed just sitting.
The other three are obvious. The ozone stuff is just ridiculous.
Car covers are evil . In garage no problem,get rid of the rats and other animals.i live in Florida were I see blankets on cars. They draw so much moisture.Moisture can total your car here with mold. Moisture can create heavy mold situations in the inside of the car and under the hood, to the point where you cannot drive the car or own it. They told me my next door neighbor’s car for that reason. She put a cover on the car and went back to Canada and when it come back it was a mess. The insurance company toltolled the car
Totally agree. I saw the results of a car cover placed by a family who intended to preserve their deceased loved one’s restored vintage Hudson. Trouble is, they parked it on the ground under a tree for years and when they finally had to sell it, it was badly rotted and mildewed. Probably not all the fault of the cover but without it, the deterioration may have been slower and visible, prompting some urgency to find it a better home.
John, good car covers save the paint and interior. Car covers must breathe. Covers bought at the local parts store are cheap, mostly vinyl and do not breathe. I keep my cars inside; I place a blanket under the car cover. I like the moving blankets from Harbor Freight, the better ones. I hold them with the HF large magnets wrapped in tape to not scratch. I place the “pajamas” over the car, and I’m done. I also use the same inside my shop, my metal building as well as the garage and car trailer. One caveat for the trailer. It is insulated by me, and I have a temperature sensitive fan with the motor reversed to draw out hot air.
I live in the Central Valley of California, so we don’t have the humidity, but lots of heat. Consider a dehumidifier for your garage or shop in Florida and a good car cover.
Is picture #4 an early ’70s Yamaha 175 Enduro? Looks like the one I had (and pushed more than I rode).
Your garage refrigerator compressor isn’t creating any ozone. The compressor is hermetic, meaning it’s part of a sealed refrigeration system. Current through the compressor isn’t putting anything out into the airspace of your garage. So I don’t know where the author gets that from. Any other motors on a typical residential refrigerator, like evaporator and condenser fans, are so small I can’t believe they’d ever create enough ozone to even be measured in your garage. I’m a retired HVAC professional, so I’m qualified to make this statement.
I own three classics (Bugatti, Aston Martin, Jaguar) and I try hard to drive each at least once every week when I’m home. As my doctor tells me, disease has trouble hitting a moving target.
You left out a more conspicuous issue, door dings. I found a local guy from Brentwood, CA that makes magnetic paddings that attach to the doors of your car. The cars on the end will also need a pair on each side because things bump into the sides as well as doors do. The product is call Ding Be Gone, diingBgone.com
Everyone has some good comments and nine cars, I rent a spot in my friends underground garage for my 98 rag Corvette, I over inflate the tires, fill the gas tank with high octane gas and gas treatment, wash it drive it over, after I have it parked I take one battery cable off, spray the hinges on the hood and doors and cover it up, 8 months later I uncover it and it was as clean as the day I parked it, put the cable on give it a boost and off she goes home for the Summer, I to have an SL 1989 560 in Palm Desert, CA. have it covered but I have a man take it out for a short drive every 3 weeks, he says he touches the key and it purrs, I to have a problem getting past that big steering wheel, anybody have any thoughts on a new smaller steering wheel with a flat bottom, my seat just won’t go back far enough, I am 70 years young and all my cars are rags, I will drive them till I die.
Good suggestions. I have owned my ’65 MGB for 47 years, and have known the car since I was 12. Bought it from my grandfather and drove it home to MN from the Bay Area. I am guilty of three of the four. I let it sit for far too long until it was undriveable. Thankfully a very skilled mechanic took on the project and I now have an attractive original driver with bullet-proof mechanicals and an overdrive transmission. Ready for any tour I throw at it. However, getting in and out of the car has been a challenge. At 71 I have had a partial knee replacement and I have back surgery scheduled for the week after next. At some point I may have to look for someone else to care for my MG. The car must be driven!
My Uncle gave me a cherry Karmann Ghia a year before he passed away. After I drove away from his house with the ghia on a Uhaul trailer, I texted him, promising to keep him up to date on all of the improvements and tweaks I planned to make. He wrote me back and said “Just enjoy the car.”
Rust should be number one not Tires ! Who came up with Tires being the #1 Silent Killer ?
I have a beautiful restored 1990 Deville, it has had its engine beautifully restored. Seals gaskets, oil pump etc. The body work taken down to bare metal and now showroom. A dealer complained it was heavy on miles, 90,000. He had one in his showroom with 16,000. I said the difference between our cars is 5 miles a day. Yours is not driven enough to encounter the problems that are coming.
Lo and behold we took his car for a test drive where it overheated and the water pump failed. Leaving these beautiful cars sit and rot to save miles on a clock somehow does not seem right.