Storage advice for old cars assumes an old car underneath. Your restomod has fuel injection, a sealed fuel system, an ECU that never fully sleeps and modern rubber on every corner. That changes what you should actually do with it.
A restomod is the one car in the collector world that doesn’t fit either set of instructions. Treat it like a classic and you’ll drain a carburettor that isn’t there. Treat it like a modern daily and you’ll ignore the things a sixty year old body shell still cares about. It sits in the middle, and in this valley it sits in 115°F while it waits. REVCity Auto Storage at 7185 Bermuda Rd, Las Vegas NV 89119 holds cars at 50 to 70°F and 40 to 50% relative humidity with a BendPak four post lift at every space. Call 725-272-1803 to talk through what your build needs.
The phrase restomod covers a lot of ground, from a mild LS swap with air conditioning through to a car where only the panels are older than the owner. What they have in common is the part that matters for storage. The body and trim behave like a classic. The systems that keep the car alive behave like something built this century, and those systems have their own opinions about sitting still.
Five of those differences are worth knowing before the car goes away for a season.
| System | On an original car | On a restomod |
|---|---|---|
| Fuel | A vented carburettor bowl that can be drained, and often is | A sealed, pressurised injection system with nothing to drain and a pump that dislikes running dry |
| Standby electrical load | Effectively none once the key is out | An ECU, an alarm, often a tracker and a head unit, all drawing quietly around the clock |
| Air conditioning | Usually absent, so nothing to look after | A full aftermarket circuit with seals and a receiver drier that prefer not to sit unused |
| Paint and tyres | Older lacquer and harder compounds that age on their own schedule | Modern base and clear over an expensive respray, on soft performance rubber that flat spots readily |
| Battery | Flooded lead acid, tolerant of a basic maintainer | Often AGM or lithium, which want a charger that knows which chemistry it is looking at |
Standby draw. An owner who has stored classics for thirty years knows a car can sit for months and still start, because the cars they stored had nothing switched on. Put an ECU, an alarm and a tracker on the same battery and the car is drawing current every hour it sits. In summer heat the battery is also self discharging faster than it would anywhere cooler. The two effects stack, and they stack on a battery that may be lithium and may not tolerate being run flat even once. This is the single most common way a beautifully built car comes out of storage needing something.
Most of the storage knowledge floating around the hobby was built in cold, damp places. The enemy there is condensation on cold metal, road salt still sitting in the seams, and a car that gets put away in October and forgotten until April. The advice that follows makes sense for those conditions. It is aimed at moisture and freezing, and neither one is what happens here.
Las Vegas hands a stored car the opposite problem. Sustained heat rather than cold. Air dry enough to pull moisture out of leather, veneer and rubber rather than push it in. Ultraviolet strong enough to matter through glass. Then monsoon dust from July into September, which finds its way into a building that is not sealed properly. A car put away for the summer here is not hibernating. It is sitting in the hardest conditions of the year while nobody watches it.
That flips the seasonal logic. In a cold market the storage season is winter. Here the season that does the damage is summer, and the valuable months of storage are exactly the months an owner is least likely to think about the car. We have written about what that heat does across the whole vehicle, and none of it cares whether the engine under the hood is period correct.
None of the above replaces the fundamentals. A restomod still wants clean fluids before a long sit rather than a sump full of used oil with combustion acids in it. It still wants its tyres at proper pressure, ideally with the weight off them, because modern performance compounds take a set faster than the tall old touring tyres these cars used to wear. It still wants to be clean going in, since anything left on the paint has months to work on it. It still wants rodents kept out, and a desert building that is not properly sealed is an invitation.
The full sequence for a car going away for a long stretch is the same one we set out for long term classic storage, and it holds here with the modern adjustments above layered on top. Fuel is the one worth reading properly rather than guessing at, because ethanol behaves in ways that surprise people and the details matter more than a rule of thumb. We cover that separately in ethanol and classic car storage.
A lift changes the tyre problem entirely, which is why every space here has one. Taking the weight off the wheels is the only approach that removes flat spotting rather than managing it, and on a car wearing soft rubber over expensive wheels that is worth more than any pressure trick. It also means the underside is reachable, so anything weeping can be spotted while it is still a small job.
Recommissioning a restomod is quicker than recommissioning an original car, and that tempts people into skipping it. Check the battery under load rather than trusting a voltage reading, because a resting number tells you very little about what the battery will actually deliver. Look for a fuel smell before you turn anything on, since a pressurised system that has developed a weep tells you about it that way first. Let the ECU relearn rather than judging the car on the first two minutes of running.
Then walk around the tyres before the car moves any distance. Flat spots that will work themselves out feel different from flat spots that will not, and the difference is easier to judge cold and stationary than at speed. If the car has been up on a lift all summer this whole step is usually uneventful, which is rather the point of the lift.
Owners across Summerlin, Henderson, The Ridges, Seven Hills, MacDonald Highlands and Southern Highlands store cars with us precisely so this part is boring. A car that spent the summer at 50 to 70°F with a proper tender on it and its weight off the tyres tends to want nothing more than a battery check and a drive.
Every space includes a BendPak four post lift, covered in BendPak lifts in storage, and a quality battery tender.
The body and interior want the same things. The systems don’t. A modern injection setup has no carburettor bowl to drain, a modern electrical system draws current the whole time the car sits, and an AGM or lithium battery wants a charger matched to its chemistry. The environment matters to both equally. The preparation differs in about five specific places.
Usually not. Disconnecting costs you ECU adaptations, alarm configuration and sometimes stereo settings, and it does nothing about the battery self discharging in the heat. A quality tender left connected is the better answer on anything with engine management. Talk to whoever built the car if it runs lithium, because a few systems have specific instructions.
With a tender fitted and a stable environment around it, a long time. Monthly start ups are the habit worth breaking, since a short run that never reaches full operating temperature puts moisture and unburned fuel into the oil and does more harm than leaving the car alone. Prepare it properly and let it rest.
Opinions differ among builders, and the honest answer is that it depends on the system fitted. The general principle is that seals prefer to stay wet with oil rather than dry out completely. Ask whoever installed your setup what they want done, and if the car is stored with us we’ll work to their instruction rather than a generic one.
REVCity holds 50 to 70°F with 40 to 50% relative humidity year round. That range protects modern paint, keeps the battery out of the band where heat accelerates wear, and stops the interior drying out in valley air. The number to avoid is an uncooled garage tracking a 115°F outdoor high all summer.
That depends on the policy, and a heavily modified car is exactly the case where standard cover gets awkward. Hagerty writes agreed value policies for collector vehicles and expects proper storage rather than monthly start ups. Agree the value with the modifications documented, and keep the facility paperwork with the policy. Call 725-272-1803 for current availability.
Climate controlled storage for exotic, classic and collector vehicles at 50 to 70°F and 40 to 50% relative humidity, with BendPak lifts, quality battery tenders and 24/7 monitored access. 7185 Bermuda Rd, Las Vegas NV 89119.
REVCity Auto Storage · 7185 Bermuda Rd, Las Vegas NV 89119 · 725-272-1803
