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What Happens When Cars Sit?
We rely heavily on data and logic at Hagerty Insider, but if there’s ever a situation where logic goes out the window, it’s when we see a never-driven, delivery-mile example of a 30- or 40-year-old car sell for beyond top dollar. For example, a Honda S2000 CR with 123 miles sold in 2022 for $205,000, double the Hagerty Price Guide‘s #1 condition (“concours” or “best in the world”) value at the time and the first S2000 to crack $200K. Further down the price ladder but no less surprising, a 445-mile Nissan Sentra SE-R sold for $33,500, or nearly three times the previous record for the model. It’s always a bit shocking when sales like these happen, yet huge prices for ultra-low-mile cars have become a regular occurrence.
The trouble is that automobiles, like everything else, are subject to the law of entropy. “Preservation” is about more than just keeping the odometer reading low. “Like-new” means something different after one, two, or three decades, even if the car still has plastic wrap on the steering wheel. The paint, upholstery, and trim may look flawless—but what about the bits you can’t see, like the complex systems and different materials that make up the driveline? Just because a car is like-new doesn’t mean it actually is new, or that you can just hop in and drive it home. We decided to call up some experts across the industry to answer a big question: What exactly is happening to a car when it sits?
First off, what’s happening to it while it sits depends on where it sits. Imagine a car in a museum—perhaps the Le Mans–winning Ford Mark IV at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Now, think of that old pickup you once saw sitting in a field. Technically, they’re both decaying. One is just decaying far more slowly than the other.
The race car lives in a perfectly curated world. The temperature in the museum is consistent and the humidity is just so: Low enough to deter moisture-loving insects and mold, high enough to prevent the tires and other rubber seals from drying out. A museum car’s tires may barely touch the ground, because the chassis sits on jack stands. The fluids in the car—fuel, coolant, oil—have either been drained or supplemented with stabilizing agents. The upholstery is regularly vacuumed to eliminate pests. Dust barely gathers on the body before someone gently sweeps it off.
The pickup, meanwhile, has been at the mercy of the weather for who knows how long. The tires have cracked and rotted. Salty air might be corroding metal. Insects and/or rodents might be living inside the cabin and engine bay. The engine’s cylinders may be dry, the gas in its rusty fuel tank a kind of goo, the oil gray instead of honey-colored. Its paint may be bubbling, its carpets mildewing.
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Those are two extreme examples, of course, but when it comes to the condition of a car, the storage (or display) environment makes all the difference, whether the car is Henry Ford’s original Quadricycle from 1896 or a brain scientist’s sporty Sentra from 1992. To keep a “like-new” car living up to its descriptor, the temperature must be consistent; otherwise, even the most immaculate car will bake, sweat, and/or freeze. The moisture in the air needs to be high enough to slow the decay of organic materials like tires but low enough to protect from rust. The room itself needs to be well-sealed to deter pests. The vehicle also needs a barrier (or two) between the paint and the dust, dirt, and grime that will accumulate. And that’s only the parts of the car you can see …
The Odometer Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story
No one is more familiar with finding automotive diamonds in rough storage situations than Tom Cotter, known around these parts as The Barn Find Hunter. When we called him to discuss this story, the consequences of bad storage were especially fresh on his mind: He had just bought a barn-find car (a 1986 Porsche 930 Turbo) with 16,000 miles. “That’s the good news,” he said. “The bad news is that it has not been driven since 1996, so nearly 30 years. And even though it had a plastic sheet on it, somehow it got filthy. Filthy. My heart breaks.” Even worse, the windows were open, and the car was infested with mice. It needs a thorough recommissioning: brakes, gas tank, fuel lines, fuel injection unit, fuel injector, fuel pump—and those are just the major areas, says Tom. He’s still in the process of figuring out how much the car needs, but if everything needs to be replaced, the work could cost as much as $40,000. Oh, and he’ll need a new set of tires—the car was parked on its original set from 1986.
“Just because a car has low miles doesn’t mean it was well cared for,” says Cotter. “Cars go bad when they sit.” A perfect storage environment and a sedentary life don’t guarantee stasis, either: “There are things that happen inside the systems of a car that break down, like the rubber in a brake system or the rubber in our fuel system. It doesn’t matter if the car is hot or cold or clean or dirty, those things are going to break down.” One interesting system that is especially prone to degrading when a car sits is the exhaust, he says. “For every gallon of fuel that’s burned in a car, a gallon of water comes out the tailpipe. It’s just part of the combustion process. And so if you run the car and then turn it off and park it for 20 years, you’ve got at least a gallon of water sitting in the exhaust system—most of it, in the muffler. Unless it’s made of stainless steel or something, it’s going to just rot right out. There’s really nothing you can do about that.”
The fluids and the metals in a car are often conspiring against each other. “One of the biggest challenges you have managing large collections—and with cars that sit, too—is coolant system corrosion,” says Scott George, curator of collections at the Revs Institute in Naples, Florida, who knows a thing or two about keeping old cars in peak health. “You’ve got brass, copper, aluminum, iron, steel, all coming in contact with water, and it can create a battery of sorts. It can almost create its own internal energy, which can attack certain metals that are most vulnerable,” like the vanes in a water pump, which are often made of a different metal than the pump itself. Using antifreeze doesn’t eliminate the problem: Those systems can corrode, too, damaging hose connections and water chambers in cylinder heads. “Corrosion in radiators, and things that attack solder and solder seams, are also a big challenge for anybody with large collections.”
Proper storage requires understanding of the car’s construction, because certain materials require special attention and/or precautions. Wool and horsehair, materials that are especially common in the upholstery of cars built before World War II, can attract cloth moths and carpet beetles. Cuong Nguyen, a senior conservator at The Henry Ford, who is heavily involved in the care of the museum’s 300-car collection, suggests vacuuming such cars each season. He also warns that some more modern wiring harnesses are made with soy-based materials that, while eco-friendly, attract mice. Sticky traps, he says, especially those without pheromones, can be good preventive measures for furry pests.
Understanding how a car is built also helps set expectations for how it ages, even in the best conditions. For instance, different sorts of paints wear differently: Lacquer-based paint, used on most cars built before the late 1980s or early ‘90s, doesn’t hold up as well as the more modern, urethane-based version. Another notoriously finicky modern material covers the soft-touch buttons found in some Italian exotics from the 1990s or early 2000s. The black material gets sticky over time.
Best-Case Storage Scenario
Cotter, who owns a storage facility called Auto Barn in North Carolina, encourages enthusiasts to store their vehicles thoughtfully because they’re protecting their financial investment. “It might take you a half-day to get a car ready to lock up, but put a little bit of effort into it. You are maintaining your investment. It’s a mechanical portfolio. A car that’s parked haphazardly will more than likely go down in value.”
The best place to store a car—with any odometer reading—is in a clean, dry place with temperature and humidity control. To avoid flat spots on the tires, which can develop within a year, the car should be elevated, just slightly, on jack stands (as mentioned above, a trick used by museums) or lowered onto a set of tire cradles. If the fuel isn’t drained, it should be ethanol-free; the regular stuff turns into a gummy, gooey mess when it sits. If the fuel in the tank does contain ethanol, it should be supplemented with a fuel stabilizer. If the car was driven regularly before storage, the carpets in the driver’s side footwell should either be completely dry or propped up, away from the floorboards. Cotter explains why: moisture from the driver’s shoes may get onto and under the carpets, and it may mold the carpets or, worse, become trapped between the rubber backing and the sheetmetal underneath, which may begin to rust.
Some sort of rodent protection, even a Bounce sheet, should be taken. (This nifty device, called Mouse Blocker, uses sonic pulses to keep the critters at bay.) One moisture-absorbing trick that Cotter recommends is cheap, and readily found at your local hardware store: charcoal, which absorbs moisture and odors. Ideally, the paint should be waxed and the car put under a cover. Feeling fancy? Look into a Car Capsule, the “bubbles” that the Detroit Historical Society uses to store its cars.
While in Storage
Of course, not all low-mile cars are barn finds like Tom’s Porsche. Many of them present amazingly well. Scott George weighs in. There’s an excitement, he says, about buying a car that appears locked in time and cosmetically perfect—free of nicks, scrapes, bumps, wrinkles. But some people, he says, may not think about what they’re getting into at a mechanical level: “Every time I see a later-model car sell with low mileage, what often goes through my mind is ‘cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching.'” He’s seen what can happen when cars sit for 25 or 30 years: “Everything functioning part of the automobile, maybe except for a total engine rebuild, has to be redone.”
Not all buyers may want to drive their pristine, low-mile prize, he admits—some may simply want to be the next owner, to park the car in their climate-controlled showroom as a trophy. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, but down the road, it may be a very costly one—if not for them, for the next person who buys it and wants to drive it. “Cars are operating machines,” George says. “They like to drive.”
At the very least, a car should be started once in a while, and run for more than 5 or 10 minutes—half an hour or so, at least, so that the engine and oil can come up to temperature and cooling fluids can fully circulate. Starting a car and quickly turning it off, says Cotter, “does more damage than if you just leave it alone because the cylinders are dry—there’s not enough oil in the system.”
Acids and moisture can build up, warns George, if a car doesn’t run long enough, “and exhaust systems can corrode from the inside out, and so forth.” He practices what he preaches: The Revs Institute has an unusually high commitment to keeping most of its 120-something collection running, and that means driving the cars—on a 40-, 50-, or 60-mile loop, for the road cars, or on track, for the race cars, whether that’s at a historic racing event or during a test day where Revs rents out a facility.
Where a car is stored may make the most difference in preserving its condition, but how it is maintained during that period is a close second. “I have witnessed actually cars that 25 or 30 years old that literally sat,” says George, “and I’ve seen it firsthand: every functioning part of the automobile, maybe except for a total engine rebuild, has to be redone. The fuel systems, the fuel injectors, all of that stuff.” Maintaining a low-mile car in driving condition requires a balance of commitment and restraint: “There are some people that have just had these wonderful low-mileage cars,” says George, “and they have done annual maintenance and they have cared for the mechanical systems. They’ve just been cautious about how many mile miles they’ve put on.”
In short, the best way to keep a car in driving condition is to, well, drive it.
Before Buying
An odometer reading, then, provides only a sliver of information. The number it displays may be sensationally low, but, for a buyer, the detective work has only begun. The current owner is likely the best source of information on the condition, storage, and maintenance of the car; if the car has traded hands frequently (normal, for some of the lowest mile examples of a particular model), it’s a good idea to hunt down the person who owned it longest. Looking at the car in person, and on a lift, is always preferable, especially if there’s an expert or specialist around to deliver the hard truths.
If you are frustrated in any of those pursuits, and if you still have questions about the roadworthiness of the car, consider your goals. Even if you don’t intend to drive it, a thorough inspection and proper storage are wise. If you crave a well-preserved example of a car you’ve been dying to own, and drive, since your childhood—you and your budget will be better served by a car that is actively driven.
After Buying
Following Cotter’s example and hiring a marque expert to inspect a car is particularly wise, especially if you’re far from an expert in that model yourself. In some very specific cases—an original car with a very special history, perhaps tied to a person—preserving the character of that may be the top priority for a buyer. In such cases, a private conservation firm is an excellent resource.
If a buyer does know a model well and wants to return the car to running and driving condition, the list of necessary checks may be long. The worst thing you can do is rush to start the car before doing a proper diagnosis: If the cylinders are dry or maybe have rusted slightly from condensation, Cotter warns, “you could put probably a decade’s worth of wear on that engine in an hour. Because you’re dragging a dry piston ring on a dry cylinder wall.” Go through every system, methodically, observing everything.
If it sounds like a lot of work to keep a car in top shape over tens of years, it is. Respect for the complexity of the machine is paramount, no matter what the storage or maintenance protocol may be, and no matter the odometer reading or the value of the car. As George says, “The mindset that we’re taking is that we’re in this for the long term, not the short term, and we’re stewards of these cars, and we want to see ’em active in the world for as long as we can.” Respect for the second law of thermodynamics is also critical: We can’t freeze cars in time, and we can only do so much to reverse the effects of time without replacing original parts.
Are low-mile cars worth the hype? That’s a personal call. For buyers and sellers, the more discerning question may be whether they are worth the trouble.
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I generally will look for a lower mileage but not a no mile car.
First they are cheaper and I will drive it killing the value of no mile.
I have worked and owned cars that sit. Budget for things to go wrong.
As for personal storage. I’m in the mid west. I have a separate building for my shop. I have heat and I install fans that circulate the air and remove the humidity. The main intent for these is to remove moisture in heated floor garages in Canada. But they keep humidity in check at set levels for less than $400.
If you buy a no mile or long term storage look for care records and if there are none then budget for possible work.
When I look at a car one of the LAST things I look at is the mileage. I buy CONDITION. My 390000Km ’96 Ranger is in better condition than many ’06 vehicles with less than 100,000Km on the ODO because for the first 307000 the original owner pampered it and DROVE it – and I have attempted to do the same over the last 12 years and 87000 Km.
When looking at low mileage cars you want one that has been “lovingly driven and maintained”, not one that has been a “trailer queen”.
I have been having some fun helping a friend get a “low mileage” Lamborghini Espada back on the road after sitting for roughly 30 years (being restored by it’s previous owner)- let’s just say I’m glad it is HIS and not mine!!!!
What year Espada does your friend have ? I have a 72 that was repo’d by a bank that sat for quite a few years and I have it going again.
What specifically do you use for the fan/dehumidification?
I’m in the southeast and humidity is a real thing, especially when it’s been cold and a warm spell hits. Opening the garage door makes the garage floor and even the vehicles sweat. My b-i-l has a two story garage and it can even “rain” inside his garage during these times.
Dehumidifiers for the house don’t seem to last very long, maybe two years at the most, so any thoughts/ideas would be appreciated!
Everything sweats because it is colder than the dew point. I keep my heat on through spring here in the upper Midwest until the cars and concrete are warm. After that, I use A/C to keep humidity down during the hottest muggy days. It works very well. Getting the concrete floor warm is the most important part.
I purchased a 2006 Pontiac Solstice in 2023 with 7500 miles Its former owner was a retired GM toolmaker. It was stored so well, it looked and ran in every respect just like the one I regretably traded in in 2007. It remains the frozen time capsule I dreamed of getting.
Honestly as I put 7500 miles on it in the first 16 months I have had not one thing go wrong. It performs as new. How is thi achieved? Low mileage vehicles meticulously cared for and maintaing will keep their new new. I have the records of maintenance.
Fluids were meticulously changed, and just for good measure I had them all changed at my expense before I picked up the car. O and the original tires had to go. New Michelin Pilot Sports.
What happened with the Like new 16 year old tires taken off? The tire store tech put them on his personal vehicle!
Same experience. Bought an ‘06 Mallet in spring ‘23. Had 12K miles. Stored in climate controlled collection. Put 6K miles on it by Oct. Only changed the tires. Although there is a slipping clutch problem to be addressed…
There is a great new renewable and replaceable system called EvaDry. I put one in the cabin and one in the trunk. Once it turns green (which means it is saturated with moisture) you plug in for about 12 hours which dissipates the moisture, and then you reuse and put it back into the car. You can even replace/refill the silica if you desire. Got rid of most of my internal moisture issues. External is a different story.
In the greenhouse industry there are many commercial dehumidifiers, large and small, that do a excellent job for these spaces.
The best thing you could do for a building that size would be to install a correctly sized HVAC system with a correctly sized air distribution system. Good air flow will be key in maintaining the environment your looking for
This article reminds me of all the people who bought new 1978 Corvette Pace Cars with every option including the Indy 500 decals, and then immediately put them into storage. Within a year or two they started showing up for sale at $25K, usually not selling. Unfortunately, most of these never appreciated beyond that, except for a small COVID era spike. Now there are dozens of ulrta-low-mile examples out there, and most have not been properly stored. These cars were meant to be driven, and would probably be worth more if they had been. What a waste!
Great advice/comment…I am from Canada and yes I use the fans to keep the humidity low and I triple seal my garage floor.
how exactly did you triple seal your garage floors? thanks
Note too. You can test the anti freeze, brake and clutch fluid to get the true condition before you buy. Strips sre cheap insurance to measure condition.
You really need to drive the car. Running it in the garage may get the coolant up to temp, but the oil is probably still on the cold end. Transmissions and rears don’t have a chance
I realize people collect for all different reasons, but the idea of having a car sit for decades accruing little to no miles seems like a terrible waste, especially when you see well spec’d out sports cars subjected to this treatment
Absolutely correct! This has been verified by OEM’s. IF the oil doesn’t get to at least 150 degrees F, the water condensed in the crankcase (from blowby) will stay in the crankcase mixed with oil.
I agree with driving the car and not just around the block. I was so excited when mom was going to get grandma’s low miles Grand Marquis until she got it. Turns out short trips and not warming up the motor built sludge like I’ve never seen before, it was so bad that when I pulled the valve covers you could read “Power By Ford “in the sludge, 11k miles in 15 years. The PCV couldn’t do its job due to the short trips.
Does a 63 Corvette convertible that the previous owner restored in 1997, drove it for 88 miles then parked it in his basement for the next 26 years, count as a barn find? And yes, I replaced most of the fuel system (gas tank looked brand new) and all of the braking system, and a few other odds and ends. Other than that, ran pretty good. Put 1,000 miles on the first summer.
I would say better than a barn find. I own a barn and don’t trust the idea of sleeping in it! My basement is much easier to control from varmits, and to control the humidity. Protecting the body’s paint job is quite vital as well!
Our family always recommends to friends and customers to drive these stored cars a little. At the same time we barely drive ours! We are trying to practice what we preach. Our ’63 Corvette has been driven 226 miles in the last 7 years.
I love my Car Capsule “outdoor showcase”, I am a working man with no money for a nice garage, and my old Boxster sleeps inside it when I’m not driving her. Living on the Gulf Coast, it keeps the humidity down and alligators out.
Please tell the Institute that if they ever need anyone to exercise the 917 for a few hours to give me a jingle.
Another great article by Grace. Keep up the hard work.
thanks so much, glen!
I agree it is a very good article, but I decided to fact-check Tom on his statement that you could have a gallon of water trapped in the exhaust system of a car run and then parked indefinitely. That would require that the system have enough volume to hold the exhaust from burning a whole gallon of gas! I’m a retired Chemical Engineer so I did a quick calculation based on my 65 Corvette being shut down at idle. I estimated one ounce of water, not a gallon!
I’ve seen more than an ounce drip out of the tailpipes after being run just long enough to bring it up to operating temp. That would be a lot less than a gallon of gas to produce an ounce out the end, not including what stays inside. But I agree that it wouldn’t be a gallon for a gallon.
I do my best to drive most of mine at least once a month. I have a 19 mile combination loop of fun curvy roads with an optional few miles of interstate, if I’m in the mood.
Yes, I should have stated that my estimate assumed “steady state”, meaning water leaves out the tailpipe at the same rate it is produced in the engine, and included a number of assumptions. Certainly, more than 1 ounce could accumulate when starting from a cold engine running at idle and eventually emit through the tailpipe(s) at a higher rate. That transient rate would be difficult to predict with a quick calculation. I think we agree the accumulation would be much less than a gallon, though.
thanks, that gallon comment was absurd.
also ‘stainless steel, or something..”
Gary, I’m going back to my high school auto shop class with Mr. Cast. He told us there is always h2O in the exhaust system, and that there would be a gallon trapped in the muffler baffles. But I’m glad to go with your more scientific approach.
Tom, I got it when I read your quote. And your shop teacher succeeded in his goal of pinning a very important and critical piece of automotive info to your conscience! Whether it’s actually 1 whole gallon of water, a half gallon, or a quarter gallon, doesn’t matter. The fact is that a surprisingly large amount of water can stay in an exhaust system. The “literalists” hate this sort of generalizing and must “fact check” everything. Whatever! Your quote is relevant and important to note. While individual results may vary, the purest “fact” is that because of water (and a lot of it) exhaust system deterioration is a constant! Happy Driving!
It matters because people take a statement made and quoted in an article as fact. This is how false information gets spread & why critical thought is important.
I recall watching muffler shops punch a hole in the lowest edge of a newly installed muffler for drainage. That was back in the day when all systems were fabricated on site.
I noticed what looked like drilled holes in the factory tail pipes on my ’97 Buick GN. I figured they were there to allow condensate to drain.
I restore classic Honda motorbikes. The factory included a 4mm diameter hole at the low point of the muffler (but not the pipes) for condensate drainage. There’s so much drainage during warmup that a puddle forms under each muffler and the uninitiated question, “what’s leaking?”
As a ce couldn’t you figure it out? I came up with 216 grams, then again I have 2 semesters of chem 50 years ago.
Oops missed one more multiplication which makes it about 8.5 pounds of water.
Most of the mass of water comes from the oxygen supplied by air.
A gallon of water weighs approximately 8 lbs, so it appears Tom’s teacher was close.
I agree 100%. No way to hold a gallon.
Thanks Gary! Tom’s statement didn’t ring true to me either. I couldn’t get my tiny head around a gallon of fuel containing a gallon of water.
He was not saying there is a gallon of water in a gallon of fuel. He said by the time the engine has burned a gallon of fuel, a gallon of water will have accumulated in the exhaust system.
I was in an Automotive Technician Program in Anoka MN back in the early 70’s.
The garage at the tech school was heated! When it was 30 BELOW zero outside, you would accumulate a LOT of WATER in the gas tank from condensation. We used to be sure to put some “de-icer” in the gas tank. You could actually feel the fuel line starting to freeze when you were driving home at night and fortunately it did not freeze but you would get the SURGE!
Realizing that “Heat” was nothing but a lot of methanol which is highly corrosive.
‘ Cold flow ‘ . Glass is considered a liquid not a solid. Ever seen an old window pane? Thick at the bottom thin at the top wavy in the middle. Applies to metals as well. – ” You can’t change the laws of physics Jim .”
Nuts. Metal is crystal. Glass is an amorphous solid.
(ps) although glass is technically considered to be an amorphous solid. But, for point of conversation, solids will creep over time and can cause a weakening in structural integrity.
The time scale in which you would see degradation in the glass or metal due to “creep” at ambient temperature and stress is in the many thousands of years, if you’d see it at all. As for the glass, the glass window panes in very old buildings were made by a method (spinning) that produced a variation of thickness in each piece. That’s what you see in those 15th century churches, not creep.
How did this become a discussion about glass? Glass creep, or flow has nothing to do with car storage. If it is a product of production then it is part of originality. If it is due to gravity then every car everywhere on this planet, whether stored or daily driven is subject to it.
https://www.pioneer.glass/what-are-old-wavy-glass-window-panes/
Good article on wavy glass. I always thought it was called spin glass but I can’t really find any info on that specifically.
Excellent article, covers it all.
Bought a 1991 Peugeot 405 Mi16 in Canada last december, had been driven 6 or 7 years and parked uncovered, parking brake on and some gas left in tank, sat in a garage until I could buy it.
10.000usd just in parts to restart correctly (fortunately I traveled back home and brought back the parts from France) mainly fuel, brakes, suspension, tires and exhaust.
But everything else worked perfectly and mint condition under the dust or inside.
Car ran perfectly well in March thanks to the help of a mechanic friend, all compressions were perfect and the more I drove the better it ran!
Loved the excitement to find it and to revive it. I very often thought that the original/previous owner could have saved a lot of my efforts/money/stress by just leaving the parking brake off or a few other easy anticipated moves.
Great car – I had a new one back in 1989 here in the UK. I would love one now, but they are like hen’s teeth – well worth reviving
As a vehicle appraiser I appreciate the information provided in the feature. Some of the advice will be helpful to some of my clients.
The sight of cars stored in plastic bubbles is just sad.
It may appear to you as just sad, but I winter store my cars in their Carcoons which keep them clean, dry, and free from mice molestation and the batteries healthy. When spring driving comes around and I bring them out, they are as clean and shiny as when they were put away. The sparplugs are removed and engines cranked to de-fog the cylinders and get oil pressure up–plugs in and away we go for another fun season.
I have driven my 68 Cougar regularly for 20+ years. Gets used several times a week. A Florida car, garaged. No storage issues. No major or minor engine or transmission repairs in over 20 years. New A/C thanks to being a Fl car. 136k. Trouble free because it is driven regularly. I intend to die with the car so the odometer reading is irrelevant. If you own it, drive it.
I know a sittng car is also a waste of fun. Here in New England my cars sits November to March and I worry. It’s inside but not heated. Put on jack stands and covered with a breathable car cover. Precautions are taken for rodents and insects and I visit it once a month. It’s a 1969 Triumph TR6 and has about 64,000 miles on it I drive a typical 1,000 miles a year but only in good weather. I still worry only because know sitting is not a good thing. I can’t even imagine cars sitting for 10, 15 or 25 years. Sounds like pretty much everything would be suspect.
Anthony, you should be OK. I have a ‘1969’ MGB. Bought it in ‘2019’ with 90,00km. Have only put on 6,700 KM in the past ‘5’ years. I live in Ontario, Canada, so it goes away in November in a ship container with vents on both ends, sits on car jacks and has a breathable car cover over it. Just re-build the carburetors every ’10’ years, replace the spark plugs every ‘3’ years, and get it washed and waxed by an expert in the beginning of Spring.
Why do you put the years in quotation marks?
I was going to ask the same thing.
I live in western Massachusetts and have owned a ‘73 TR-6 for almost 40 years. Winters USED TO BE so harsh here (and salt on the roads so thick), that I’d store it under a cover from November to March. But winters have become much milder, and for the last half-dozen years I’ve been able to go for at least a 1/2-hour spin most winter months. Just last week we had a day in the 50s and dry, so I took it out for a long ride.
My intuitive sense is it’s better for the engine, exhaust, and tires than if I just kept it stored for 3-4 months, and it’s a lot more fun. Helps me through the short, dreary days of winter.
Great article…..I just don’t believe that a gallon of H2O is produced with each gallon of fuel used by the car.
It’s probably a gallon of water vapor. Vapor concentration is a whole other can of worms, but nowhere near that of water in liquid state.