Hi,

I need to take a trip out of town and will be gone for 1 month. My 2009 S60 2.5T will just sit in the garage the entire time and will not be started.

Is it okay to leave a car like this for that length of time without any special preparations?

I ask because people have told me in the past of some special preparations they do if a car will not be started for months. Not certain what is too long and what isn't.

Thanks

 

One month of inactivity of the car would certainly drain the battery dead. That would be the only issue IMHO. There is a float charger sold at Harbor freight w/c trickle charges the battery. U can leave it connected while u r gone. I used one but only for a week and it surely kept the juice alive.

 

Buy a float charger, and make sure it isn't a "trickle" charger. The float charger will slowly recharge the battery until its at full charge, then shut down until the battery discharges to a certain point when the float charger will start charging again. A trickle charger just continuously pumps a small amount of current into the battery and could overcharge it. The float chargers usually have a green light and a red light on them indicating "full" and "charging", respectively. We do this every winter for 4 to 5 months with my wife's Sebring convertible and have no trouble starting it in the spring. Also used on my motorcycle. So my float charger is black & orange as at the time I owned HD's. Now its an old Honda, but I still use the same float charger. Its small, maybe 3x4x2, plugs into a wall socket

In one month, your gas won't go bad, and good tires won't significantly deflate. Nor is condensation inside the passenger compartment or trunk a big worry. Wash it, however, in case there is junk on the paint. You don't want it sitting there for a month. No need to change oil, jack up the car, use Stabil gas treatment, etc., for just a month of inactivity parked in a garage.


Plan B is lend it to me for the month and I'll be sure I give it a good work out every day!

 

a 3 stage charger by far is the best.....read this, it will tell you all about the different type chargers:


http://www.dslreports.com/r0/downloa...20Charging.pdf

hope this helps!!!

 

Thanks for the replies everyone.

So is there no concern about "dry start" after letting the car sit for 1 month?

Some people have told me that when you let a car sit for a long time all the oil runs down the cylinder walls and you thus have a moment of no oil on the cylinder walls when you first start up until the pump starts moving the oil again.

Does this make sense? Is a month perhaps not long enough to be concerned? Is it never a concern?

 

I wouldn't worry too much about that issue. If you are really finnicky, you can always remove plug and give a small squirt of motor oil (clean) in each cylinder, turn the engine over (w/o plugs in place) and then reinstall the plugs. I do this to store long term (i.e. winter) my motorcycle and lawn tractor, but not my wife's Sebring convertible since the rear 3 plugs aren't reachable unless the intake manifold is removed. And its been stored every winter since 00-01 without a hint of oil burning.

If you do this, be conservative with the amount of oil since you don't want to foul the plugs on start up.

My guess is that a very large % of oil film is gone after 24 - 48 hours anyway in normal conditions based on how motor oil behaves outside the cylinder/valve train environment.

 

Well, I started the S60 up for the first time in 29 days. It just sat in my garage the entire time. The air temperature was about 88 degrees F when I started it.

The battery seemed to be fine. I didn't have any kind of a trickle charger on it while I was gone. The only odd thing was a strange water gurgling sound from the driver’s side around dashboard height. Could this be some water pockets in the cooling system pipes? Only lasted about a second.

One interesting thing I noticed. I use to have a 97 Ford T-bird, and after starting it after a couple weeks absence the oil pressure light would take slightly longer to go out. Seems to makes sense, as the oil has likely all settled down. On the S60 however the oil pressure light went out just as fast as it always does. Not entirely certain, but I'd say that's a good thing.

By the way, I am using 100% synthetic oil. Not sure if this helps or not after a lenghty idle period for the car.