I remember those mornings when was living in NJ.

 

I wash/wax my car on the last warm/sunny fall day, to protect it throughout the winter. I suppose changing the motor oil, tranny fluid, and coolant would all be good ideas. Then taking it easy on slick/icey/snowy roads. Traction control is an awesome feature, and can save your life, but when it turns on this is very hard on the transmission, that's why I like to turn it off.

My Monte is an awesome winter car so far, last winter it got down to negative 19 degrees Fahrenheit, and she still started like it was 50 out, took forever to warm up though.

 

Quartermain N/A SS, so yes or no on the traction control?? let me know, my total drive to work is about 22 miles round trip, but i don't even want to do that, i have an 06 with 49000 miles on it and it does have traction control, tell me the best for me. thank you...

 

If you have good tires, know how to handle your car well, and take it safely in the snow you will have no need for traction control. I previously drove a '95 T-bird RWD and '97 Sebring FWD before owning my Monte, neither of those cars had the traction control, although with the RWD T-bird I slid A LOT.

The Monte Carlo is FWD, second best option to have in the snow after AWD or 4WD, that should be enough, traction control is a nice feature to have, but at the expense of prolonging the life of the transmission I would keep the Traction Control OFF.

 

thankyou for the explanation, i appreciate it, i never really knew how it worked or reacted, thanks

 

oh, chris, i forgot to mention, you ought to look into getting a differant set of wheels for in the winter, mabe some kind of factory style alloy ones if you can find em for cheap, and get a good set of winter tires mounted on em..... you dont wanna leave those nice mags on it, 'caus the salt & that damn awfull brine crap they spray on the roads around here will eat 'em alive, and your wheels will get reeeally nasty reallly quick... if you can find some of the 16 inch wheels off of a 5th or 6th gen for fairly cheep, get em

then just make sure you wash the salt and crap off every chance you can get to a carwash... my friends dad had a 91 s10 pickup, he bought it new & drove it in the winters here for 250,000 miles with almost no rust.... because he washed the salt off almost religiously every weekend. do a good wash & a good wax to protect your paint now, and if you can get a set of car ramps pull your car up on em every so often to inspect it underneath, and remove / wash off any salt / snow that builds up

 

The most overlooked thing in the winter time is just GIVING YOUR CAR TIME TO WARM UP.

You spoke about the engine oil and the viscosity which is fantastic information for people. But really you don't HAVE (though it is good) to drop to a lower viscosity unless you are talking -20 degree starts all the time. However you HAVE to let your car get to operating temperature before you start driving so that the oil has time to warm up and get everywhere before you put the stress of driving on the engine.

Also, another big one is making sure that you get all the slush off your tires and around the wheel wells. If you have a build up of slush around your wheels and in your wells, then it can easily freeze and when you go to turn the wheel have an issue, or start to rub on the slush which can cause you to lose traction. Everyone hates the mud-flaps on the Monte (I don't even like the looks of them) But I have them because in the winter time, it's easy to flex the mud-flaps and get that slush off.