winter lay-up

My A will spend the winter in an unheated garage in Connecticut. How do I prepare her for the winter lay-up? I think my radiator is full of water not antifreeze. How do I drain the radiator and block? What else should I do?
 
You ask a question to which a 100 will reply... I am honored to be the first....Antifreeze is the first and the most important...no doubt. Get that baby on a 50/50 mixture asap...AND RUN IT THROUGH SO ALL CAVITIES ARE 50/50. Your choice "how" you do it...the petcock on the hose connection can provide substantial drainage with little effort. You can pull a hose if you want...main thing is drain as much as you can...run it...test it...drain it again and repeat until you are sure you have a good solid winter mix. The next is fill the gas tank to the tip top with gasoline...but I believe you are an ethanol state...add Stabil at twice the amount called for....If you really want to be a good Model A guy...change the engine oil now in the Fall...The theory is the oil holds moisture that can harm the bearings. Main two things are anti-freeze and gas stabilizer....run both through the car....Kiss her and wish her Merry Christmas. If she is Irish....promise her a St. Pat's Day ride...and then you are good. You want to torque the head, check the lug nuts, air the tires, check the rear oil and rear banjo bolts and the transmission oil...hey it's your cow... milk it as you wish. The owners manual and the RED Book tell many ideas. The other thing I would do... I will be laughed at for this.. or banned... Human urine deters mice.... You can buy all the stuff you want...I have. I found simply taking a pee around my storage area openings like doors and the area...no mice. Mice are terrible enemies of the old car hobby. Think about it...we are at the top of the predator chain and every species knows it...but we never 'mark" our territory. A little urine (how you deliver it is up to you) goes a long way. I have no mice since I started to spread my scent....Point being mice deterrent in the storage is paramount.....Pee, lights, music, poison, ..observation....don't abandon a well maintained in a garage in December and expect the same car in April....MICE ARE HORRIBLE BUT they can be easily controlled....have a few bottles of whatever....and pee them away.
 
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Although I am in SoCal and we drive our cars year round, sounds like jg has some good suggestions. One thing I might suggest is to put the Ol' Girl up on blocks so you don't get flat spots from sitting?

I do put a Pest Control Pouch in my car to deter critters. Can't attest if it works because I have never seen anything in the car? Which is a good thing. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019G1TXII?tag=atomicindus08-20
 
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Not sure about peeing in or around the garage. Although, I do put dryer sheets and cans of mothballs under the seats and a few loaded traps under the cars. So far (knock on wood), no issues with mice or other vermin.
 
Oh oh. "more of a visual learner." Does that mean I am going to see some guy peeing around his garage?:D
 
The mice in my area seem to be used to everything.They live in my outhouses,so I don't think that bothers them too much.My friend has a picture of family of mice in the trunk of his 63 Chevy living in the nest they made from all the dryer sheets he put in there.My best one is the Cab Fresh repellants I used in my Phaeton.Two weeks after I put it under the seats they ripped the bags open and ate the stuff.
 

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Depending on how wet your garage is, you may want to put in a dehumidifier. The noise may even keep the mice out.
 
I use the little green TomCat brand poison blocks. The starter pack has a little plastic bait station with a hole meant to keep out pets. I got a box of extra bait blocks, and the mice gnawed through the box and plastic wrappers to eat more bait! They love the stuff! I don’t know if the poison has killed off a few generations and I’m just seeing newer ones, but they haven’t chewed on my car yet. Also I have a rat terrier who assiduously polices the area and actually caught a mouse last week, shook it to death, then played with its remains and didn’t want to let it go. Finally bamboozled her to give it up by distracting her with a treat.
Thomas Edison supposedly made a rat electrocution plate device for use in the little railroad telegraphy room he worked in as a lad. I can’t be certain because I wasn’t there.
 
I used a lot of those little green blocks.I bought them by the bucket.There was a woman that lived 1000 feet from me that rehabbed birds of prey.Owls,hawks,and eagles.She always did necropsys on the dead ones,and found the ones local to us died from mice that had ingested the poison.There were two of us right here that had been hitting the mice pretty hard with that poison over the last year or so back then.We never said anything,but we laid off,and she told me that the birds poisoned by that green stuff suddenly dropped off to zero.That was over 10 years ago,and I no longer toss those blocks under and around everything in my outbuildings.I use the bucket traps,and those electric zappers.The big ones are called Ratzappers.Those are the ones with two steel plates that are charged up,and when the mouse steps on both he gets zapped.
 
I don't know if this has been mentioned before but it is very important to put a battery maintainer on your battery. A battery maintainer with a desulfator feature will extend the life of your battery.
 
I don't know if this has been mentioned before but it is very important to put a battery maintainer on your battery. A battery maintainer with a desulfator feature will extend the life of your battery.

The video talks about that extensively
 
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