How to maintain your car during COVID-19 pandemic

The aforesaid flat spot is your primary concern. The trick, of course, is to drive the car once a week. But you’ve decided not to and have also disconnected the battery. In that scenario, all you need to do it to put the car in neutral (this applies to both manual and automatic vehicles), disengage the handbrake/parking brake, and push the car very slightly (about 25cm) either front or backwards, depending on the space. This ensures that the portion of the tyre that meets the road is not the same – i.e it is changing every week or so. Remember: do this ONLY if the parking area is perfectly flat.

And, as mentioned earlier, tyres with normal running pressure, on cars that are not moving, can deteriorate soon. The trick is to inflate it to about 40 Psi once a month. One of the easiest ways to do this is by using an air compressor. A useable one can be bought online for as low as Dh80. But, of course, you’ll have to connect the car battery for that, to use it as a source of power for the air compressor.

Apart from the above, one basic must-do is car cleaning. Get your car washed at least once a week. The dust that accumulates on cars here impacts the paint in the long term, apart form making vehicles look bad. A bigger concern is bird droppings, which are quite acidic and can seriously damage your car’s paint work. A car wash or simple cleaning with wet cloth at least once a week can save you loads of headache.

Keeping fluids topped up is key for the well-being of your engine. Most of this is simple enough to do at home. You could buy a bottle of recommended coolant, power steering fluid, brake fluid and top them up in the respective reservoirs as and when the levels go below the marker point in these reservoirs. Even an engine oil change and oil filter change is doable in limited space and there are a lot of online videos that teach you how to. It is fairly simple. For, transmission oil and filter change, you’ll probably need to visit a service centre.