chuhsi

In a typical month, I'll only drive my car 2 times for 50 miles. I should probably sell my car, but haven't gotten myself to that point. The car is parked in my garage year-round.

What maintenance should I be doing on my car given the super low mileage? I change my oil yearly.

Thank you!

zeroptzero

Nothing as long as you have a normal sized battery in good condition. When you do take it out it's important to go for a nice long drive, so 50 miles is perfect. That allows the oil to get fully hot to evaporate condensation in the oil and exhaust.

Run the air conditioner for at least 10 minutes on each of the 2 drives regardless of the temperatures to circulate the lubricant in the system, this will keep the seals in good condition. Then run the fan with no a/c for a further 10 minutes to expel moisture in the HVAC system to avoid musty odours.

windhund116

Do you have a battery trickle charger?

Chuck S

In storage, which describes your car, Honda recommends running the engine up to full temperature (fans cycle twice) once a month. 50 miles should do this nicely. Battery "tender" will prevent the battery from dying between drives. Car batteries only get a few cycles to full dead before staying dead.

Tires are oxidizing and hydraulics are absorbing moisture based on time, not mileage. Some other maintenance is time based. Check your manuals.

-- Chuck

mball19

Once it is warm, shifting at redline will help keep carbon off the valves.

cosmomiller

Italian tuneup.

climhazzard

I'm not typically one to challenge Honda engineers, but from everything I've read it is better to just not start the car, as idling will simply not bring the oil up to operating temperature, thus condensation does not burn off. That said, this is stuff I've read on the internet, so who knows where the truth lies. It's also questionable just how much impact moisture has on modern oil with all of it's additives. Lastly, if someone has an oil temperature gauge and tests out how hot the car gets only when idling, I would love to see it. For now, I'm not starting my S2 unless it's being driven for at least 10 miles or a half hour.

Note on tires: if tires are kept indoors in moderate temperatures, they can last a long time, or at least some can. My RE11s are ~7 years old and aside from being at 4/32nds after less than 10K miles (that's the point though, right?) they are in great shape. If the vehicle is outside in the sun, it's a completely different story. But that applies for many aspects of car storage.

flanders

I have no problem getting the oil up to around 90°C (194°F) when idling, measured in the oil pan.
Don't think you could get it much higher than that though since the radiator fan switches on at that point.

Chuck S

Cylinder head temperatures reach 200°F within a minute or two. The rest of the block warms at about the same rate. The entire engine reaches a high enough coolant temperature quickly after that. If the coolant is hot the rest of the engine is hot -- that's where the heat comes from. Arguments that much engine wear occurs during starting are technically true but specious and sell a lot of synthetic motor oil which is better at slowing this wear. The article by Bob's the Oil Guy explains it well.

-- Chuck

climhazzard

Interesting! I've spent a lot of time on BITOG and it seems the consensus (again, this is a public internet forum) is that it's still best to leave an engine as-is until the vehicle is ready to be driven again. I suppose there may be limits to any of this, but if the S2000 is going to sit for the winter, I would hope that leaving it sit without starting, OR following Honda's advice to start 2x a month would be perfectly fine and non-impactful.