How to Prepare your Toyota Vehicle for the Winter
Winter is quickly approaching in Norwood, Massachusetts, and now is an important time to ensure your vehicle is winter ready. Norwood averages 47 inches of snow a year, so staying safe on the roads is extremely important to residents near Nucar Toyota of Norwood. Updating your vehicle before the weather changes is crucial for maintaining optimal vehicle performance and ensuring your safety on the road. We’ve compiled a guide to help you prioritize winter preparations for your Toyota. Follow these tips for a vehicle that functions well all winter long.
Change Out Your Tires

Wintery Roadby Robin Monks is licensed with CC BY 2.0
If you have summer tires on your vehicle, ensure you switch them out for all-season or winter tires. Similarly, if you think it might be time to replace your tires, make sure you do that before the onset of winter. Having tires with proper tread and traction helps prevent your car from slipping when winter road conditions make driving hazardous. It’s a good idea to replace old tires or change to the appropriate season’s tires in advance of winter for the safety of yourself and your passengers.
If you’re purchasing new tires for your vehicle, it’s also important to ensure they’re a quality option that’s compatible with your Toyota. You can visit our tire center or use this online tire tool to see which tires are best for your vehicle this winter.
Perform All Your Regular Maintenance
The worst time to find out something in your car has broken or run out is the moment you need it. Before winter, take your car in for service. This way, you’ll have time to make all those fixes before it’s too late. Have the technician check fluid levels, especially the levels of fluids you’ll rely on heavily as the weather turns, like anti-freeze. Be sure to check things you’ll need like your brakes, power steering, and defroster, too. All these can be extremely important in winter conditions, and driving without them can put you in danger.
Scheduling a service this fall ensures someone sees your vehicle before the weather turns too cold. You can perform the required maintenance and feel confident driving your vehicle even as the weather starts to change.
Prepare an Emergency Kit
If an accident does happen, ensure you’re prepared by keeping an emergency kit in your car with you at all times. Be sure to have an extra coat and warm weather gear, a first aid kit, and tools that can help you retrieve your car if it gets stuck, like a shovel. In the winter, be sure you always travel with a charged phone. This way, if you’re ever in an emergency, you can contact someone you trust to come help.
If your car gets stuck often, kitty litter can also be a good tool to keep in your Toyota. You can pour the kitty litter beneath your stuck wheels to provide traction and retrieve your vehicle from a bad situation.
Check Your Battery Health
Cold weather can drain batteries fast. Most batteries last about three to five years. If yours is approaching the three-year mark, it might be time for a replacement. Take your car into a service center or test it yourself to see the kind of amps it’s generating. Some batteries are specifically made to perform well in cold weather, but freezing temperatures can be hard on batteries and require extra amps to start the engine. Ensuring you have a healthy battery before winter can prevent you from having a car that won’t start in bad weather.
Update Your Wiper Blades
Old wiper blades can also be a nuisance in the wintertime. Using your wipers on snow and ice can ruin their edges and make them worthless. You can replace your regular wipers with ones equipped to cut through ice and snow. These are often hardier and won’t weather as easily as standard blades. Still, it’s a good practice to remove all the ice from your windshield before using your blades.
It’s also a good idea to lift your wipers away from your window before a snow. This can help keep them from freezing to your windshield or becoming damaged. Our parts department can help outfit you with all the supplies you need this winter.
Keep Your Gas Tank Full
While more of a reminder than a preparation, remembering to keep your gas tank full through winter is important for proper vehicle function. When temperatures fluctuate, condensation can collect in your fuel tank. Having a low amount of gas in your tank when this happens can turn the gas and make it challenging for your vehicle to convert your fuel into power.
You might experience a vehicle that can’t accelerate or generate power, which can lead service experts on a goose chase checking your fuel pump and injector. To avoid unwanted costs and inconvenience, always strive to keep your tank above halfway full.
Doing this has an additional benefit. Keeping your tank full reduces your chances of running out of gas in inclement weather. A walk to the gas station in winter conditions isn’t a fun time for anyone.
Keep a Small Bag of Sand in Your Trunk
If you have a rear-wheel-drive vehicle, it can help to keep a small bag of sand in your trunk. This can weigh down the rear of your vehicle and give you more traction on the road. Many Toyotas have their engines in the front of the car, truck, or SUV. This means that the front of the vehicle is often significantly heavier than the rear. A sand bag can help even out the weight and help your back-end feel more stable. Ultimately, doing this can prevent unfortunate accidents and fishtailing in icy road conditions, where the rear wheels lose traction.
We want all our customers and Toyota drivers to stay safe this winter. By taking simple precautions, you can get your Toyota winter ready in no time. To schedule a service, contact us today. We’ll help you look over your vehicle and suggest services you can perform to set you up for success this winter.
Our service experts are knowledgeable in all things Toyota and know how to ensure you travel as safely as possible in your vehicle this chilly season. Still have questions? Let us know. We want to help you feel confident and at ease while driving Norwood’s roads this winter.
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