One of the rules most car enthusiasts seem to live by is that cars must be driven. If they are not driven, then these cars must be sold to someone who will drive them. A lot of other enthusiasts, including myself and people like Derek Bieri of Vice Grip Garage, don’t live by this rule. Some enthusiasts will allow their cars to sit for years at a time before they even touch them again, let alone start them. Still, everyone has their limit. What’s the longest you will let a car sit without starting it?
Over the weekend, I watched another classic Vice Grip Garage revival. There’s just something about watching a guy bring some old iron back to life that makes for the perfect finish to the workweek. Sure, Derek’s videos have now become longer than a Monday, but they’re still a pleasure to watch, and I learn some classic car wrenching hacks along the way. It was through VGG that I learned about automatic gas siphons!
Anyway, last week’s revival was a 1968 Chevrolet Bel Air. Check the video out!
This car was different because instead of flying off to some distant part of the United States or beyond, Derek saved this car from his own property. Most of the cars that Derek saves end up sitting on his property. At last count, he had well over 100 cars just sitting along tree lines. Some of these cars end up sitting for so long that sometimes they need to be re-rescued to be driven again. Derek also receives some vehicles in non-running condition, and then they sit on his property for an unknown amount of time before he gets around to saving them.
This got me thinking. Derek’s example is extreme since rescuing an old car every week has been his business forever now. But what about the typical enthusiast? How long are they willing to let cars sit?
Admittedly, I have been the enemy of the “cars must be driven” crowd. There have been times when I let cars sit for six months or even longer between drives. There are cars I only take out of the garage when I’m taking my wife on dates on a sunny day in the summer. My Japanese Kei cars and the Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDI often fit that bill. There are cars I drive only when I want to feel the experience of driving a new car again, without having to buy a new car. That’s my 2016 Smart Fortwo, which has just under 6,000 miles.
Some vehicles aren’t as lucky. I have let vehicles sit for two years or longer because they were broken, or they were illegal to drive. Remember, my 2005 Genuine Stella sat for six years under my care before I got it running.
I’m not the only one. My elderly neighbor spends more time looking at his El Camino than driving it. He readily admits that it actually sucks to drive, but he sure likes looking at it. So he enjoys it as more of an art piece than a car. I totally get that.
Here’s where I turn things to you. What’s the longest you will let a car sit? What’s the longest you have let a car sit? It can be for any reason, be it that you have a million cars, your cars are broken, or that you just hate how your car drives, but love how it looks.
Top graphic image:Â depositphotos.com
I think it’s a bad idea to let a car sit for more than a month. When my mom couldn’t drive anymore, I’d run her car at least once a month and take it for a spin to get it fully warmed up.
As for cars I own, cars that I own don’t sit. I’ve only owned more than one car for short periods… basically “I bought a newer car, selling the old car” situations. I don’t hang onto old cars for nostalgia. I don’t have the space for that.
5-7 days if I have anything do with it, if I am unable to, for whatever reason, I would have someone do it
Depends on fuel. Ethanol fuel goes to hell. So does pure gasoline, but it takes longer. Ultimately fuel systems will be the first thing to deteriorate from sitting, as the fuel itself will go bad.
Other than that… there’s not a real limit; if you have something indoors and out of the weather, and you can control humidity, things tend to stay nice for a very long time.
This is a good reminder tho; I’m going to go start all my cars this afternoon.
Ten days
I thought of this question (“how long is too long?”) regarding an apparently abandoned Honda Fit in my condo garage I was going to track down the owner and make an offer on. Last tags dated 2023. But it’s probably not worth my time after all.
That’s nothing man, it’s a Honda. I’ve let some of my hondas sit for multiple years on a battery tender. Started right up.
About a month. Even if the snow/salt/ice prevent driving, I like to let it run for a bit. Even with a battery tender.
Pretty sure the Corvette has sat for at least six months at some point in my ownership because it doesn’t come out of the garage as long as there is salt on the road. Around here that can be from October to May in a bad year (which would actually be more than six months, come to think of it).
Otherwise I do try to get it out every few weeks at least. Even with a battery maintainer, the electronics don’t like to sit and it tends to get grumpy the first time I start it after a long break.
The amount of preparation makes a hell of a lot of difference, empty fuel tank or alcohol free or what”s in there for example. My motor bikes and garden massacre tools usually get some thought and typically sit for 4 to six months. My Fiesta is always a “ran when parked” surprise and may sit for a couple of days to three months and always be expected to run. 11 years old and on its 3rd battery. The NOCO Genius is great at getting it going to go buy another battery. (-:
Yesterday the annoying trick was “Key Not Detected”. Click OK and then cycle the door lock button 8 times and the key magically works, been a couple of months for that one to come around again.
I won’t get in depth to the OEM fuses that look good and aren’t, but just imagine the surprise. )-:
The sad thing is I like the Fiesta and driving it makes me smile, which is not sad which is why I keep it.
If I had the time and space for more cars, I’d have a better answer than the default of “December through March when I can’t legally drive my Fiero and it’s in the garage.”
If I had to try and predict, I’d probably liken it to the guitars I own: they have specific purposes/experiences, and if I don’t use them for that or they are redundant in some way, then I don’t need it and it’s not gonna sit around my place. Let someone else use ’em.
In a Youtube note, while VGG is what got me back into cars and into the restoration genre in general, I can’t tell you the last new one I watched. I just can’t sit there for upwards of four hours anymore. I’m still avidly watching Junkyard Digs and Pole Barn Garage (mostly because they’re my flavor of midwestern car dork), and they usually clock in around an hour or so. That seems perfect.
Me, too. Love his delivery and content but man o man his videos are too long. I suppose if I wasn’t a cheapskate and paid for YouTube to get rid of the commercials I might let it play in the garage while working on other projects. These days it seems I spent a hell of a lot of my YouTube time trying to skip commercials that show some poor guy driving a truck while sitting on a toilet or that inane Liberty Mutual guy with the same name as me saying something stupid to an emu.
I’ve taken other steps to get around youtube ads (pi-hole and watching in a browser rather than the app, which only works at home) so the ads are less of an issue for me, but man is it obnoxious when I use any version of the app. All sorts of garbage. I can’t imagine how much worse that would make one of those marathon vids.
Try to keep it to a month over winter (still on a battery tender, though). I’ll pick a nice day and run an errand to get things up to temp.
I’ve read that the various UV stabilizers, oils, waxes in tires do their work to keep the dry rot at bay when they get warm and the tires flex under use so I try to follow that line of thinking.
I guess it depends for me. If they are up and running (not pulled apart for projects) most my vehicles are probably started at least a day a every month or 2. But if in storage for winter they can sit for a few months (normally November until April)
I try to remember to start my truck at least once a week; otherwise the battery runs down and it becomes a difficult start. I think the battery in my garden tractor has sufficient oomph to spin it over but still – when she sits more than a week, the fuel in the carb evaporates and it takes a few extra pumps and tries to get going again. It’s an easy vehicle to start if you drive it every day: two pumps, twist and go. But last year I only drove her about 400 miles, kind of missing her really.
My three cars in Maine (BMW wagon, Land Rover Disco, Spitfire) typically sit from October to June or July, with MAYBE a spring awakening these days. Happily in a snug garage on their battery maintainers. Conversely, if I don’t drive one of them to Maine, my cars in Florida sit the opposite months, also in garages on battery maintainers.
Recently the Land Rover probably sat for most of a year as I didn’t register it in 2024. But it may have gotten started and moved out of the garage once or twice, because a friend had his car in there over the winter. Hard to say.
I try to make sure that all my misfit cars get started and driven every week. But the reality is that some of them regularly go 2-3 weeks without being driven.
I’ve had days where an entire afternoon was spent starting cars, driving them around until they were well warmed up, then moving on to the next car. I consider it a part of basic car maintenance.
My 2002 Ford Mustang GT sits….a LOT. Typically at least a month at a time, over the winter, far longer. (It has NEVER been driven on a winter road. Ever.) It always restarts like I drove it the day before. It sits in the garage, and always seems to be ready to go for jaunt when the mood strikes me.
That’s a Ford 4.6 Modular for you though. They’ll practically start and run on dog piss, and there’s not much to keep alive module-wise. It’s only seen about 400 miles so far this year, so you do the math, hahahaah.
I’ve found that newer cars can’t go as long as older ones due to various computers and electronics. My 2016 Mazda6 is very unhappy after just a week or so when we go on vacation. I can monitor its battery voltage via my remote start app and it gets pretty low after 7 or 8 days.
My 1990 Pontiac Sunbird has sat for over two months and started successfully again (albeit those two months were spent in the garage where it lives). It started slowly after that two months, but still did so. Now, over the winter, it is kept on a trickle charge via the battery tender my mother-in-law got me for Christmas.
For sure – that is why all of my cars have battery maintainers, and if I am going to be gone for more than a week they get hooked up to shore power. Though my Mercedes sat for a month recently and fired first twist of the key.
My Spitfire will actually sit all winter unplugged perfectly happily, but it only has the radio memory and the clock as power draws.
One week.
If I haven’t driven a car for two weeks, it is time to put a For Sale sign up. Cars shouldn’t sit, and someone else clearly needs it more than I.
How long is my vacation?
That plus a couple days on either side of the trip are how long I’m willing to let my car sit in the garage undriven.
And since I work from home – I often don’t take the car out for several days in a row.
I always used to park my nicer car over the winter and drive a beater 4wd vehicle…. but since we stopped having winters in MA, I only tend to park the car if there’s a storm. So it usually only sits for a few weeks at a time. I don’t drive my current “winter car” all that much in nicer weather except when going camping (It’s my AWD minivan that I have built into a mini camper) so it’ll sit for several months at a time.
I’ve not found any issues with just letting any vehicle hang out for even 2 or 3 months.
Back when I had my RV, it’d stay parked from October through April or May every year, and it never had any issues just firing right up.
My old K5 gets stored during the salty months in north eastern Illinois. I fill it up, back it in the garage, put the axles on Jack stands to avoid flat spotting the 40s and leave it on a trickle charger until it’s warm enough to drive it again.
Usually at least once during the winter I’ll start it for sharts and giggles because I like V8 noises but I won’t run it long as it’s in the garage, I’m not taking it off the stands until it’s ready to be used.
When I have the luxury of a 3rd “fun” vehicle (vs my wife’s DD and my tow vehicle), it’s usually a seasonal vehicle. When it’s in season, it gets driven as much as possible, usually multiple times per week. Out of season, it gets started monthly and idled until all the fluids are hot, revved a few times, then turned off again. I have no scientific basis to back up my thoughts, but I believe that the car appreciates it. And that’s what matters to me.
I find it doesn’t make any difference. My Spitfire has sat in storage for 6-9 months a year for the nearly 30 years I have owned it. I don’t even bother putting Stabil in the tank, since it’s in a cold garage in Maine. Starts right up with a pull of the choke every spring/summer. My Land Rover Disco sat for more than a year last year and ditto. Registered it in July, and drove it around a bunch for the week I was in Maine.
I do keep them on battery maintainers though – batteries last FOREVER if you do that. The one in my Spitfire was 20+ years old when I replaced it last – and that only because it was the wrong size and I finally got the right hold down bits, which didn’t fit the wrong size battery. The one in my e91 BMW lasted almost 10 years, and I have no doubt it would have lasted a few more if my dumbass housemate hadn’t unplugged the maintainer to use the extension cord, then didn’t plug it back in. Normally lucky to get five years out of those cars.
I do keep them on battery maintainers though – batteries last FOREVER if you do that.
Unless it’s a sealed design you also have to ensure there is enough water in the cells. Charging a dry battery is a surefire way to kill it.
Battery maintainers take that into consideration – a maintainer is not just a charger.
Maintainers are supposed to avoid overcharging a healthy battery but I cannot find anything to support the idea they won’t damage a dried out wet cell. In fact I have found no mention of wet cell water levels in any battery maintainer product review or manual I’ve found so far, even to include checking water levels before hooking the thing up. Do you have a link that shows maintainers do indeed have protections against damaging under filled cells?
If your battery is already underfilled, it is already half dead to start with. Why would you even allow that to happen?
My point is that a maintainer is not going to boil the water out of a battery – that very much can happen if you just leave an old-fashioned charger on one.
Maintain your crap correctly.
“If your battery is already underfilled, it is already half dead to start with. Why would you even allow that to happen?”
Because battery cells don’t have a fluid level gauge on the dashboard, not even an idiot light. Nor is water lost at a steady rate, it can be fine for years, then it can suddenly drop.
Compound that with the fact many batteries now are sealed so checking water levels isn’t something people are used to doing anymore.
“My point is that a maintainer is not going to boil the water out of a battery – that very much can happen if you just leave an old-fashioned charger on one”
How do you know it won’t? I saw nothing in the product descriptions nor the manuals I read claiming a battery maintainer will recognise a dry wet cell battery.
The only protection I’ve found is that unlike a dumb charger a smart battery maintainer will shut off when the battery is fully charged and kick on again when the voltage drops. So what happens when the voltage drops because one of the cells is low? Will it try to charge it and risk further damage or will it throw an error light?
You need to find more interesting things to worry about, my friend. Ultimately, if a battery is suddenly losing water, something in the car is VERY broken. Most likely, your voltage regulator is crap causing the battery to overcharge and boil the water out, or the battery case is cracked.
In the real world, none of this is a real issue. I have a vast crowd of classic car owning friends, most of us have MULTIPLE cars in storage (probably 50 in my direct circle), nobody has EVER had a problem with a battery that is on a maintainer to my knowledge. Could it happen? I suppose – but I could be killed by a flaming toilet seat falling from orbit too.
What causes problems is having the damned things NOT on a maintainer (Mercedes Streeter seems to be expert in that dilemma). My dumbass housemates killed the battery in my BMW wagon by unplugging it one winter so it sat for four months plus not plugged in. I’m sure I could have gotten another few years out of it.
“Ultimately, if a battery is suddenly losing water, something in the car is VERY broken. Most likely, your voltage regulator is crap causing the battery to overcharge and boil the water out, or the battery case is cracked.”
Extreme hot and dry weather can do it too. Which can happen during long storage periods like those being discussed here.
Then I guess you should redneck engineer some sort of IV drip for your battery. <shrug>
During the warm months, I run my 68 Beetle at least once a week because I like to take it out as often as I can. During the winter, I stabilize the fuel, and try to let it run and idle for 15-20 minutes at least once every 2-3 weeks. It really doesn’t like it if I go much longer than that, and tends to need carb tinkering.
My wife’s Forester XT gets run usually once a week. She’s a stay at home mom, and doesn’t drive it much, and when she does it’s always super short trips. I like to take it to work and stretch its legs a bit at least once every other week. I would trade her my Crosstrek and make that thing my daily in a heartbeat if it didn’t require premium and get garbage gas mileage. It sure makes some fun noise though!
I let my Volvo sit for a month while I was out of town. The battery was completely flat, it forgot all my radio stations, and now the air conditioning doesn’t work. I genuinely have no idea how that happened.
It’s not a car but I drag my cheap generator out every 6 mos or so and let it run for a bit just to check on it.
I started rebuilding the carb on my motorcycle just shy of 10 years ago, never got it back on, lost parking (so it ended up in my father-in-law’s shed, and later in my garage after moving), then became a dad, so it was always on the back burner. The world’s nicest Honda Rebel is virtually worthless, so trying to sell a scruffy non-functional one was more effort than it was worth. Got the ok to start riding again a few months ago, it fired up without much work, and is currently at the shop for a once-over before I start riding it again properly.