Getting Your Car Back Out Of Storage
Most of the advice you’ll find is written for a car that sat in a barn. If yours sat indoors on a lift with a tender on it, the list is shorter and it isn’t the same list.
Search for how to take a car out of storage and you’ll get the same checklist everywhere. Check the battery. Look underneath for leaks. Check for rodent nests. It’s good advice and most of it exists because the car was somewhere it shouldn’t have been. REVCity Auto Storage is at 7185 Bermuda Rd, Las Vegas, NV 89119. Call 725-272-1803 to arrange a collection, and here’s which half of that list is actually yours.
Most Of That Checklist Is About Neglect
The standard list isn’t wrong. It’s answering a different question from the one you’re asking.
Nearly all of it was written for a car that spent a winter in a home garage, a carport or a barn. In that setting the car is exposed to damp, to temperature swings, to anything that can get in through a gap, and to nobody looking at it for six months. Each item on the list is a response to one of those.
Change the setting and the list changes with it. Here’s the same advice with the reason attached, which is the part nobody prints.
| Standard advice | Why it’s on the list | Still applies indoors? |
|---|---|---|
| Check for rodent nests | Something got in through a gap | No. Nothing gets in |
| Check the battery is not flat | It sat for months disconnected | No, if it was on a tender |
| Look for perished hoses and belts | Heat cycling and dry air over years | Rarely. Air is held at 40 to 50% |
| Check for fresh fluid leaks | Seals dry out and shrink | Yes. Still worth a look |
| Check tyre pressures and sidewalls | Weight sat on them for months | Yes, though the lift changes it |
| Go gently on the first drive | Brakes and fluids need a cycle | Yes. This one never changes |
Two things fall out of that. You’ll do less work than the internet expects, and the work you do should be the right work rather than all of it.
What The Building Already Handled
Worth being specific about, because it’s the reason the list gets shorter.
Our building is sealed. No daylight reaches the cars, so there’s no ultraviolet working on paint, dashboards or trim while you were away. There’s no blown dust and nothing with teeth can get in. Temperature sits between 50 and 70°F and relative humidity between 40 and 50%, year round. That band is what stops rubber drying out and stops anything corroding.
Every space has its own BendPak four post lift, so the car sat with its weight off the tyres for the whole stay. That’s the single biggest difference on collection day. A car that rested on its tyres for eight months can have a set in them that never fully rolls out, and whether a flat spot recovers or is permanent depends almost entirely on how long the weight was on it.
Access is gated and monitored around the clock, and collection goes through people rather than a public row of roller doors. That’s slower by a few minutes and it’s the reason nobody drives off with the wrong car.
What’s Still Yours To Check
Four things, and none of them takes long.
Fluids first. Look underneath before you move it. A sealed building doesn’t stop a seal ageing, and a fresh drip on clean concrete is easy to spot and worth knowing about before you’re on the freeway. If the car went away without its fluids sorted, the fluids that actually matter in storage explains which ones degrade while a car sits still.
Then the tyres. Pressures drop over months whatever you do, so check them cold before you drive rather than after. Look at the sidewalls while you’re down there.
Then the start itself. If a tender’s been on it the car should fire normally, and the sequence for starting a car that has been sitting is worth following even when you expect it to be fine.
Brakes. Discs develop a film of surface rust in any humidity, and the first few stops will feel wrong and sound worse. That’s normal and it cleans off within a mile or two of gentle use. What isn’t normal is a pedal that goes soft, so make your first stop a slow one in the car park rather than at a junction.
How Long Was It In There?
The length of the stay changes the job more than anything else does.
Under three months, there’s very little to do. Check it over, start it, drive gently for the first few miles. Between three months and a year, add the fluid check and expect the brakes to need a cycle. Past a year, treat it as a proper recommissioning and budget time for it rather than collecting on your way to somewhere.
Tyres are the one thing that keeps getting worse with time rather than staying level. If the car’s been with us for a long stay, what changes on a genuinely long stay is worth reading before you plan the collection.
| How long it sat | What to allow for |
|---|---|
| Under 3 months | A look round and a gentle first drive |
| 3 to 12 months | Add fluids, tyre pressures and a brake cycle |
| Over a year | Treat it as recommissioning, not a collection |
Arranging The Collection
The practical part, and the part no article covers.
Call us and we’ll schedule a time. Tell us roughly when you want it and we’ll book it in. The car needs to come down off the lift before you can take it, which is not something that happens while you wait at a gate, so arranging it beforehand rather than arriving unannounced is the whole trick.
Have the obvious things with you. Whoever is collecting needs to be someone we’re expecting, and if it isn’t you, say so when you book rather than on the day. Bring your keys if you kept a set.
Check your insurance is live before you drive away. If you reduced the policy while the car was off the road, that reduction has to be reversed before it moves, and that’s a call to your insurer rather than something we can do for you.
If you’d rather not come at all, we publish a pickup and delivery service and can bring the car to you instead. Ask when you call 725-272-1803 and we’ll tell you what’s involved.
What Getting It Wrong Costs
Mostly time, occasionally money, and the expensive version is avoidable.
The common mistake is collecting in a hurry. A car that’s been still for months wants a few minutes of attention and a gentle first mile, and the people who get caught out are the ones who booked a collection twenty minutes before they needed to be somewhere. The second mistake is driving off on a reduced insurance policy, which is a small administrative job that becomes a very large problem exactly once.
The genuinely costly outcomes come from the storage rather than the collection. Four flat spotted tyres, a dead battery that was never on a tender, a paint correction after a season outside. None of those are collection day problems. They’re decisions that were made months earlier.
We’re at 7185 Bermuda Rd, Las Vegas, NV 89119, a few minutes from the airport, which makes collection easy if you’re flying in to pick the car up.
Frequently Asked
Call and we’ll arrange a time. The car has to come down off the lift, so it isn’t something to turn up for unannounced. How much warning suits us is a quick conversation rather than a rule on a web page.
If it went in prepared and had a tender on it, it should start normally. We won’t promise anything about a specific car, because condition depends on how it arrived and how long it has been here.
Tell us when you book, not on the day. Whoever comes needs to be someone we’re expecting, and sorting that in advance is quick while sorting it at the gate is not.
Look underneath for fresh drips, check the tyre pressures cold, and make your first stop a slow one. Brakes pick up surface rust in any humidity and clean off within a mile.
If you reduced the policy while the car was stored, reverse it before the car moves. That’s between you and your insurer and it’s worth doing the day before rather than the morning of.
Treat it as recommissioning rather than a collection. Allow proper time, check it over thoroughly and plan a short gentle first drive rather than a long one.
Ready To Come And Get It?
Give us a call and we’ll schedule a collection time, get the car down off the lift and have it ready for you. Tell us if somebody else is coming instead, and we’ll sort that out while you’re on the phone rather than at the gate.
