With winter here, ensuring that your vehicle is ready for frigid temperatures and inclement weather is essential. But what exactly can you do to prepare your car adequately, and why does it matter? Luckily, we’ve put together a quick overview to help answer those questions and more.

What Does It Mean To Winterize Your Car?

Before delving into the importance of winterizing your car’s exterior, it’s prudent to first discuss what the term “winterize” means in relation to your vehicle. This is especially true when colder temperatures and wintry weather like ice and heavy snowfall start to creep in, as they can prove to be detrimental to the durability and overall quality of your car.

To winterize a vehicle means taking a few extra steps to ensure that its most prominent exterior features are ready for the frigid cold. Moreover, it means taking the spare time to perform specific maintenance tasks on your vehicle to arm it with protection that could be considered an echelon above the standard.

What Are Specific Methods for Winterizing My Car?

There are numerous areas of your vehicle that you can modify or prep when it comes time to winterize its exterior. For instance, if your focus is preventing dirt, debris, snow, ice, and road salt from damaging your vehicles paint, you may consider investing in a ceramic coating or a high quality sealant.

• Coatings will provide your vehicle with an artificial layer against the elements, repelling these road contaminants and taking the damage they may cause otherwise so that you can keep your paint protected and in good condition.
• Sealants are similar in this aspect but are not as thick, do not last as long, and don’t offer as much protection. However, for those not ready to invest in a ceramic coating, an application of even just a sealant during the winter months can make a huge difference. Helping your paint by offering a smaller protective layer rather than none is better overall.

If you tend to worry more about a flat tire causing you to spin out on an icy highway, snow tires are probably a good place to start. Oil changes, windshield wiper replacements, and adding a bit of antifreeze as needed are also excellent methods for keeping your car well-protected throughout the snowy season.

And of course, sometimes the best thing you can do to protect your car from the frigid temperatures proactively is wash and touch it up with some quality detailing tools. This is mainly because a clean car is much less susceptible to a harmful buildup of dirt. Using quality products to clean and maintain your vehicle prevent these contaminates from sticking in the first place, and overall prevent the deterioration of its surface over time. Winter months are super harsh when it comes to contaminates so being proactive is very important.

Why Is It So Important?

The importance of winterizing your car’s exterior comes down to the fact that in doing so, you’re ensuring not only your safety but also the safety of everyone you share the road with. To illustrate, with a sturdy, more durable pair of windshield wipers, you’ll have more visibility in the event of a snowstorm. You can even pair that with a product that can further keep your windshield clean like a windshield coating, or a product that adds protection to your glass every time that you use your windshield wiper fluid. CQUARTZ Coatings are great to use on the glass for protection and hydrophobics against snow, sleet, and rain. Then it’s a great idea to maintain that coating with products like Dr. Beasley's AdvanceCoat: Glass. This product gets added into your windshield wiper fluid and adds protection every time you use it while driving.

In a similar vein, having snow tires on your vehicle will keep your car from sliding off an icy road and potentially causing a collision. Even something as simple as a regular oil change can keep your engine properly lubricated and running smoothly, even in freezing temperatures.

Hopefully, this brief overview provides some new insight into why it’s so crucial to winterize your vehicle, as well as some reliable methods you can use to get the job done.