Long parking in the cold can kill even a fresh foreign car

Long downtime is contraindicated for the machine in almost the same way as intensive use “for wear”. Why do you need to “walk” your car from time to time, driving it even if you don’t need to go anywhere?

The writing of this material was prompted by a situation witnessed by the correspondent of the AvtoVzglyad portal on the morning of the first working day after the New Year holidays. The stage for her was the parking of cars of residents of a multi-storey building. In the rays of a late winter dawn, when people began to leave for work, the still unsuspecting protagonist of the “performance”, like everyone else, left the entrance and moved to his car, successfully parked last year right under the windows of the apartment. A bad “bell” sounded for him at the moment when the central lock of his rather fresh Toyota Camry did not respond to pressing a button on the key fob. The use of the good old key also made it impossible to get into the salon: the seals of all the doors of the sedan turned out to be shackled by moisture frozen due to the cold snap that had come on the eve.

The stubborn owner, after 15 minutes of "dancing" around the car, accompanied by an inexhaustible stream of monotonously dull obscenity, still entered the salon through the back door. I did not remind my neighbor of my five-day-old recommendation to at least warm up the car for preventive purposes for reasons of personal safety. In the meantime, a new disappointment awaited the happy door winner who slipped behind the wheel - Toyota completely ignored the turn of the ignition key. I wonder what he hoped for: already when the central locking did not work, it was clear that the battery was completely dead.

And again, the words about "if you had started the car a few days ago ..." did not leave the lips of the author of this text - the degree of tragedy written on the face of the car owner turned out to be so high. He began to suspect that he would obviously be late for work. Let's omit the details of the search in the vicinity of a car whose owner would agree to “light up” a cold Camry. It turns out that most of them are really afraid of the consequences for the electricians of their cars from such "humanitarian aid" to their neighbor. Together with the hero of this story, we had to pretty much look for a donor car. And then our benefactor was forced to lose at least half an hour of his personal time to launch the “stagnant” Toyota. Apparently, there was moisture in her gas tank: the car reluctantly, far from immediately and extremely uncertainly rattled the engine.

To celebrate, its cheerful owner was already ready to rush towards explanations with his superiors, but then I accidentally looked under the bumper of the car: under it, slowly increasing in size, an ominously wet spot was melting the ice on the asphalt - evidence of a leak in some pipe or seal in the cooling system motor. They tend to crack from a long stay, and the frost, squeezing rubber and plastic, apparently opened a leak. Thus, it became clear that the car would not go anywhere today. But if its owner did not rest soundly on New Year's weekend, but periodically rode it, such a nuisance could have been avoided ...