indoor storage tips - duster or car cover?
 

Hi do you guys who garage your cars use a car cover or a duster or both? My car is now officially semi-retired and will see only occasional weekend actions. I may also need to invest in a battery tender... How many days can the car sit idle without weird fault codes/warning lights popping up due to low battery?

Cheers,
Wolfy

I'd upgrade that to 'must have' status.

The occasional weekend run is not sufficient to keep the battery adequately charged on a modern Jaguar.

Graham

indoor storage tips - duster or car cover?
 

I have a duster. I don't drive it everyday, but I don't NOT drive it enough for the hassle of a cover...

Can't advise as mine lives out-doors, but ... a battery tender is a must; I have a CTEK 3.8

My car will go 2 months and still start and run fine. I normally do not let it go that long, though. If I know I am going to let it sit for a month, I disconnect the battery and do not use a charger.

The reason I prefer that is I had 4 batteries in a row last year that were always on a tenders, and all went bad within 2 years of new. Not sure what was happening, but it was much more than a coincidence. They were even using 4 different brand tenders. The tenders "tend" to kill a battery if you use them very long term. I now cycle a trickle charger between my "hanger queens", so that each gets a full charge about once per month. In between they just sit un-tended.

I use covers. If you are only going to leave the car indoors, there are some light weight terry covers made for dust protection that are easy to use. I have a Triumph that has not been washed in 3 years, because it never gets driven in the rain and is covered when not in use.

My Jaguar cars are off the road for winter, say 5 months; I have found that disconnecting the battery for the winter and recharging it with an automatic 12 amp (max) charger for a few hours each month has served me well for the past 20yrs.

I'm a fan of the Covercraft covers and the battery tender junior (brand). Dusters scratch if the surface isn't perfectly clean, which may not be a problem if you dust two times a week ;-).

Jeff

Both my Jags are in the garage get dusted every morning, unless they have been in the rain, then they get washed.

The XK8 gets driven about 1 or 2 times a week the XJR gets driven almost everyday. So, battery isn't really a problem. If I am gone for a couple of weeks then I put a battery maintainer ( from Harbor Freight, $9) on the XK8.

Dust her daily in season. I use an indoor cover in the off season and have a battery tender on it in the off season as well.

That's odd. I've had several batteries last for 8 to 10 years on battery tenders. Now in 2008, I added a couple of cars and bought two Sears Diehard brand. Although identical in appearance to one that I'd already had for ten years, they were quite different (the old one was heavy and the new ones were light as a feather) and I immediately noticed problems. I happened out in the shop one evening when it was quiet and heard a noise. Investigating, I discovered that one of them was actually boiling a battery and I thought it a lucky thing I discovered the malfunction before it did damage. I took them both back for a refund and bought the Battery Tender brand instead. They've been fine ever since. Certainly not a product you want to skimp on when you've got expensive classic cars plugged into them.

I use car covers too indoors for my collector cars. I drive them typically about once a month and it keeps them mostly dust-free so that when its time for the car show, all I have to do is pull off the cover, unplug and go. When I get back, I'll go over them with the California Duster and then put the covers back on. One thing I need to do tho is to launder my car covers. They're getting kinda nasty. You gotta go to a coin-op laundromat to use the big machines and that's kind of an inconvenience.

Thanks for all your replies! Regarding the battery charger, the general consensus seems to be -- do not leave it connected all the time, remove it after a full charge, then connect it again when the battery is low.

Cheers,
Wolfy

The only problem with that theory is that its virtually guaranteed that you'll eventually forget to check it and sometime when you're ready to drive it, the battery will have gone flat. If you don't trust your battery tender to stay plugged in all the time, plug it in to a timer programmed to turn it on for a few hours a week. But the way they're supposed to work is to monitor the battery and turn themselves on only when the battery falls below some threshold.

Hi Wolfy. You're referencing a trickle charger. I use a battery tender. A battery tender will only apply voltage when it drops to a preset level and once the battery is charged, it will shut itself off, so it essentially mirrors an alternator.

A trickle charger on the other hand, applies constant voltage to the battery and you want to avoid that.

Agreed - No trickle for sure. Buy a tender and leave it plugged in all the time during long sleeping stints, it won't damage anything. Spend the money on a good one and simply hard wire the quick-connect adapter to the battery with the pig-tail easy to get at. Plug her in and go.

If she is sitting for a really long time, just remember to pull up the trunk floor every month and make sure no water has cooked out of the battery causing the nasty crusty stuff. In some of my cars, I'll actually pull the battery and connect it to the tender on the bench. Sorta OCD, but if lead filled, it helps me sleep better.

Cheers,

Jeff