As summer arrives at long last, lots of you will be getting your classics out from storage. However, just hooking up the battery and turning the key with no other preparation is unwise. It doesn’t matter if you’re extracting a car from three months’ storage or 30 years of neglect. There are procedures you should stick to if you want the car to get going rapidly, reliably and safely, so let’s open the garage doors and find out what to do.
First things first. There is a significant difference between what’s required for reviving a car stored carefully since last autumn and something that’s been sinking into the floor of a barn since Elvis was alive, so we’re going to look at each aspect of the job separately, getting the straightforward precautions out of the way first.
Engine and fuel supply
If you haven’t been running the engine every week or two through the winter, then slap yourself on the wrist. Getting it up to working temperature is a good way to keep everything mobile and it moves oil around the engine and petrol into the fuel system. Any engine left sitting in a cold garage for months on end without being started should receive a bit of TLC. Make sure the battery is fully charged – it might have a lot of work to do. Take the distributor cap off and remove any corrosion on the rotor arm, points (if
