Getting your car ready for the rainy days

By Botchi Santos June 03,2014

With summer coming to an end and the rains finally offering a cool respite from the intense heat, here are some car-care and maintenance tips to look into so that you’re best prepared to cope with driving in wet weather. It’s the same set of tips we’ve offered before, indeed, but it is something we all often overlook. You might save a few bucks doing away with these tips but they can make a huge difference on the road, especially with the heavy rains and flash floods we now experience on a regular basis.

 

1.) Check your tires. Your tires are the only thing that comes between you and the road. Make sure your tires are always properly inflated. Properly inflated tires can absorb the shock from potholes and bumps that could be hidden by standing water/floodwater.

 

How much tire pressure is enough? Offroad driving expert Beeboy Bargas recommends that your tires should be completely round—this ensures that you have enough pressure and air inside to handle the shock from road imperfections as well as debris on the road. Also, make sure that there’s enough tread depth left. Tires that resemble racing slicks (i.e., no grooves) will have zero grip when the road is wet. If the steel belts are showing, you can also suffer a tire blowout when you encounter a big bump or debris, causing an accident and leaving you stranded at best, or causing harm and death at worst when it happens at high speeds.

 

Lastly, have your wheels aligned. Tommy Teng of DTM Motorsports says that wheel alignment should be done at least once a year. But if you upgraded your wheels, tires and  suspension, there’s a greater chance for your wheel alignment settings to be knocked out of the factory-spec as well because of the higher loads and tighter,  thus demanding more tolerances to  the upgraded wheels, tires and suspension. Misaligned wheels and tires make the vehicle difficult to control especially when the roads are slippery, decrease vehicle stability at high speeds and can  impair braking performance, lengthening overall braking distance.

 

2.) Check your battery. According to one of the technicians I spoke to at FCL Hagios, a large chain of car battery retailers, most car battery-related  problems occur during the rainy season. The car battery is under immense load from extreme weather changes, the battery poles are prone to corrosion due to humidity in the air and are subjected to full load when the A/C, wipers  and headlights are  all on at the same time. FCL Hagios has a computer that can check your battery’s performance to see how much power it is still outputting and how much charging capacity it still has. It’s also a good time to check your alternator and the belt that drives it; if the belt is over five years old, regardless of its visual condition, change it. To prevent corrosion from forming at the battery poles, clean the poles with some mild soap and water with a toothbrush, dry them and then put some die-electric grease from Wurth, available at all high-end hardware stores, on the battery poles and the wires and terminals.

 

3.) Change your wiper blades. Whether you just  buy the refill rubber part or the entire wiper blades, they’re still a simple but worthwhile insurance policy to ensure you have good visibility. Brands like Bosch and Wurth offer windshield wiper blades  between P550 to P1,200, depending on the size you need. If your wiper blades are more than 3 years old and your vehicle is regularly parked outdoors, which can dry up and crack the rubber element, change them.

 

To improve visibility, I always recommend using Wurth Windshield Washer concentrate. Two drops of this highly concentrated windshield washer  can treat as much as 3 liters of preferably distilled windshield fluid, and really help wipe off rain, chemical residue from acid rain, tree sap, bird droppings and other acidic elements that can stain your windshield and impair your visibility.

 

4.) Have your car’s windshield, windows and headlights cleaned and treated to improve visibility. High-end detailing and car-care product manufacturer Mother’s offers a special windshield-cleaning chemical that effectively removes chemical deposits from your vehicle’s windshield. Mother’s in particular offers two chemicals specifically for glass:  Water Spot Remover, which removes water spots and stains plus other residues from your windshield; and Re/Vision glass and surface cleaner that removes lighter residue from glass and metal surfaces. For headlights, Mother’s offers its NuLens headlight renewal kit which polishes your old headlight lenses, bringing back the car’s original illuminating power and improving overall visibility at night.

 

With the right tools and knowledge, you can use  these Mother’s products at home by yourself, but it’s best to let the professionals do their job. HART International is the distributor of Mother’s Car Care products in the country and can perform these services at its San Juan detailing shop, but its products are also available at high-end hardware stores nationwide.

 

5.) Have your brakes checked. Tommy Teng also recommends having your brake system checked. The brake pads should have enough friction material left; the brake discs should still be thick enough  within factory spec; and your brake fluid should be clear gold. If the brake fluid looks like soy sauce or patis (fish sauce), flush it out and change your fluid. The increased heat and humidity hastens moisture absorption of the brake fluid. If there’s a lot of moisture in your brake fluid, the brake fluid will overheat, causing the rubber brake lines to expand under heavy braking,  diminishing  braking control and performance.

 

While you’re having the brakes checked, have them cleaned of brake dust and road debris, plus have the brake discs’ surface corrosion removed to mitigate accelerated wear. From experience, ATE, Motul, Castrol, HKS, Endless and Wurth have very good brake fluid.

 

While these tips might be simple, they can make a big, life-and-death difference on the road. At the very least, you’ll be driving much more confidently because you can see better and have greater trust in your machine, making you more relaxed and reassured that you’ll get to your destination much more safely.

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