DeLorean Winter Storage

Like a dopey, fat, tired grizzly, the DeLorean crawled into its cave on the weekend, fully prepared to doze the winter away.

November is a sad month. Not only is the sky bleak and trees bare, but it's the month I put my DeLorean away. The process is simple, and quite the opposite of how bears hibernate. Where the bear stuffs his belly with cute things like dimple-faced fishies, brown-eyed squirrels and pink-nosed bunnies, the DeLorean's fuel tank must be emptied almost entirely.

Emptying the tank on Sunday was easy enough. Suz and I hopped in and took the D for a spin. Against my own anal rules for taking the car out, we drove on a cloudy day, which turned to dusk, and then to darkness. Except for the three separate groups of cerebrally-challenged teenagers who walked across the street directly in front of us, the drive was mostly uneventful. Odin did appear in the sky for a few minutes to whip lightning bolts down at us, but he was no match for the handling prowess of the DeLorean.

When we returned home, I poured the STP fuel stabilizer into the tank, and following the instructions on the bottle, ran the engine for exactly five minutes. Martini Fact: I pronounce engine as "injin".

The bottle has two measuring lines on it, one for 5 mL, and one for 10 mL. The bottle doesn't say how much to use, so I always use 10 mL. It's probably too much. Overkill is cool.

DeLoreans and their fuel system components are very vulnerable to the ravages of fuel gone bad. It's extremely common for DeLorean owners to have replaced some, if not all, of their fuel system. I don't like to take any chances with my baby since I replaced my fuel injectors, so every year I follow the same procedure.

Bears don't. They eat what they catch. One year it might be baby bunnies and the next, it might be some campers. If the bear is really old and slow, coolers full of beans and beer might be his only meal - which is not all bad. After all, beer makes big beer guts. And the more "insulation" you've got, the warmer you are in the cold.