Getting Your Car Ready For Summer

I don’t want to jinx it, but summer might actually be here, right? We’ve had a fair few sunny days, even in the North of England, and it’s made me realise a few things. I didn’t know how easier it is to burn in England compared to on holiday, how much us Brits go crazy for it, and how much worse it can be to drive if you’ve not prepped your car for the summer months.

With that in mind, i’ve put together a few tips for making sure you can cruise around, windows down, music blaring, without any troubles.

Switching Your Tyres Up

If you are anything like me, you won’t have read the driver’s manual when buying a new car, but I gave it a go and actually found out there’s different tyre pressures for different types of road (see one of my previous posts about this), but it’s also recommended to change your tyres round in the summer months, with a different tread and pressure for the warmer roads.

It’s the tread that’s the main difference between a winter tyre and summer tyre. For summer, the composition of rubber compounds are designed to not go below 7 degrees, if so the tyres rapidly harden causing driving to be a right pain. If you’re looking for new tyres, Point S provides cheap tyres of good quality brands.

Helping with Visibility

During the sunny period, I was recently driving back to Liverpool on the motorway and there was a bit of glare from the sun, causing visibility problems. I reached for the windscreen washers to tidy things up and realised I had no water left, causing the rest of the journey to not be as enjoyable.

So there’s a personal tip for you, keep the liquid levels high during summer as you’re more than likely to notice mucky windscreens, and the glare from the sun alongside this causes all sorts of problems when driving. I recommend checking this once every 2 weeks if you know you use them often, as there’s nothing worse than realising it’s too late.

Looking Good

Okay, this one isn’t vital, but if you love your car and personal image then it’s very important. You might think you look good driving about, sunglasses on and your latest summer mix blaring out, but if your car is mucky then you look a bit of a fool.

There’s plenty of independent washes popping up all over the place, usually around £6 – £10 for a quick 5 minute wash, which makes all the difference. But if you want to go all out, there’s nothing better than a full varnished or polished car, sparkling in the sun, if you have a metallic paint effect. Mines a metallic dark red and I can’t stop looking at it on a sunny day when polished up. Don’t forget the rims too!