Winter Storage

With fall just around the corner, I am thinking about winter storage. In Northeast PA, we sometimes have hard winters and the thought of salt, cinders and other snow melt material on the sheet metal are just too much to bear.

Anyway, the Jag usually rests from late October unntil March or April. I keep it on the second floor of an unheated concrete garage (the building is on a sloping site so that the second floor is also at ground level) with a cloth cover. Before I put it away, I give it a good cleaning inside and out, fill the fuel tanks, remove the battery, put a coat of neetsfoot oil on the leather.

I am curious if there are other procedures people use for six month storage. I know the full fuel tanks cause gum to build up in the carbs, but I think empty tanks would invite rust.

Any other storage procedures you use??.

I would agree on leaving the tanks full, but it wouldn't hurt to drain them out, so as to remove any water on the bottom, I would then fill them up and add a fuel stabilizer. Might even be a good idea to run the engine long enough to get some of this stabilized fuel through the lines, but this is speculation on my part. I would also change out the brake fluid, and make sure that all the old fluid is flushed out. About the most important thing I can think to protect is the cylinder walls, luckily there are a lot of products on the market for this. My opinion is that some of the best are made by Marine companies such as Yamaha, etc. They are specifically formulated for "fogging" internal engine components. But heck, WD40 is better then what most people do. One area that will really suffer in any Jaguar, is the electronics, switches and the sort. The contacts by nature are usually lacking in any sort of serious protection from corrosion. The ultimate would be to protect these with DC4 (Dow Corning), but this is highly impractical, with the exception of doing it at restoration, or when working on a specific part such as a power window switch. (And many of these contacts will by design, wipe whatever you put on right back off.) Short of a heated or dehumidified garage, about all you can do is put silica crystal packets in the interior, (can't remember what these are traditionally called.) If you can find it cheap, it is great stuff. (I got about 10 lbs., at Boeing Surplus in Seattle, and it can be reused over and over.) The military used to use this stuff a lot, I have seen parts packaged in sealed containers with dates of 1944-50 that still look new. One last thing, make sure the car cover can "breathe", most do, but if not, it can really mess up the paint and chrome. A good coat of wax or silicone really helps with keeping condensation from messing with the chrome.