Looking way off into the future after "finishing" all the work. Is anyone using the 'car bubble' or something similar? I live along the coast of Florida and I'm dealing with lack of circulation in my garage and the mold that results. Didn't see any other posts on this.

 

use box fans, They are cheap and work the best.

 

I saw one in use at the national corvette museum several years ago, they had the lone 83 C4 in it

 

my neighbor has his 01 camaro ss in one while he's off in afghanistan. It's pretty cool an does a great job, the car is fresh as a daisy. haha

 

I was planning to buy one until I read this article. Maybe the owner of the car did something wrong, don't know. But if mold is a problem in your garage this seems to suggest that the bubble won't cure it and could make it worse.

Lots of people love them though.

Places to store Cars, or how I thought it was safe, what happened?

By David C. Grainger, President of The Guild of Automotive Restorers

So have you ever been sucked in by a gimmick? Bet you have. I know I have a few gimmicky things lying about including some miracle tools offered by a large retail chain and promoted by a famous do it yourselfer which not only don't improve on the original tool, they don't even come close to being able to do anything other than look good laying at the bottom of the toolbox.

Some gimmicks however can cost you a lot of money when they fail to work properly. Recently I had occasion to see one such device.
A few years ago a new automobile storage system was offered to the hobby. It is composed of a large storage bag made from plastic into which you place your car by driving it onto the bottom panel and then zipping the top on. You then hook up a supplied fan and the car shelter inflates itself, ballooning around the car to create a little mini garage. There is also a dry pack of silica gel that you are supposed to pack inside and which removes moisture from the air. The catch with the dry pack is that you have to change it every six months or it loses its effectiveness.

So it sounds like a great idea for storing a car doesn't it? I admit that the initial concept is probably fairly sound although you can certainly replicate its better points far more cheaply if long term storage of your car is in the cards. For short term or winter storage I think that it is a total waste of time. It is also not without its dangers.

I had occasion in the last week to go and look at a wonderful 1914 Renault Victoria Landau. This is a magnificent car and certainly a valuable one and is deserving of the finest in care, so the owner bought one of these shelter systems.

When we opened it up I was horrified, as was he, to see the car. Every surface which was not either brass or paint was covered in an eighth of an inch of gray mold. The rear seats which are fabric were uniformly soiled, the front seats in leather covered completely as was every other piece of leather, fabric and believe it or not rubber including a fair amount on the tires.

I have come across this particular mold once before on a 1921 Packard Roadster which had been stored in similar heated conditions. Although it appears to wipe off, you are just wiping off the top of the organism. The part that is actually destroying the fabric or leather is inside breaking it down and converting it into more mold. The solution is that every part of the car that has been infected has to be rubbed down with a cleaner designed for killing mold and then dressed to nourish and revitalize the leather, and fabric has to be thoroughly cleaned if possible or replaced if the damage is too extensive. Unfortunately you have to also treat the cushioning and padding where the mold may have penetrated. This can be a fairly expensive procedure as you can well imagine.
So how did this happen? The shelter had created almost perfect conditions for this kind of mold. It seems to prefer dark, fairly dry, warm and well ventilated conditions. The plastic shelter provided it with perfect conditions in which to grow and prosper, and considering that in places it was really dense, especially in areas right in the air flow of the fan, it really likes a good supply of fresh air, which is probably what introduced it into the shelter in the first place.

Now before you think, yeah, but where was the shelter, in some dusty, dirty old barn perhaps, let me tell you that the car was stored in a fully finished and heated warehouse in which wood work is performed, so it was spotless, dry, and aside from a little fresh sawdust around a work bench, quite dust free.

I think that the car would probably have fared far better if it had just been left on blocks with a cotton dust cover on it, so what we have is another gimmick which is not only not an improvement, but is actually injurious to the car that the owner is trying to protect.
If you are storing your car in a heated building, don't wrap it in plastic. Let the car breathe naturally with just a light cotton car cover on it at the most. If you don't mind a little natural dust then even that is not needed, and you should always remember that as soon as you put a car cover on a car it becomes a table so if your car is stored in an area where other things are going on such as a family garage you can expect to find it being used for many things which, lacking the cover, most people wouldn't dream of using it for.
Now at this time of year many owners rent storage areas to put their car into for the winter season and in some cases those areas that they rent are in heated underground garages under apartment buildings and other structures.

This kind of storage is just about the worst winter storage that I can think of, unless you intend to rent a space in the local roads department salt storage buildings.

Underground garages are not only heated, they are humid. The air is usually circulated through the garages after being used in other places in the building. Now on a nice snowy day when the roads have been well salted you have all kinds of cars coming and going with those huge junks of dirty gray slush dangling from behind their front and rear wheels. During their stay the heated air in the garage causes these lumps to fall off and melt on the floor. They salty water then permeates the air and acts as a wonderful carrier to deliver salt and moisture into every recess in the cars stored there. I have had many people say that they store their cars in underground garages but that those garages are dry and clean. They might appear to be dry and clean in the area rented to them but what you have to remember is that those spaces would not have been rented if that was a busy floor. The rental areas are usually in the lowest levels where the building manager does not have full occupancy, but on the floors above the garage can be quite busy with in and out and overnight parking. The air which carries the salt and humidity is common to the whole garage, whether you think it is dry or not. If you can possibly avoid it steer clear of underground parking storage for your classic car. Personally I think that a car is better off parked outside and covered in snow than it is underground during a Canadian winter.

So how about barns. Are they a good place to store your car? Not bad if you take the right precautions. I don't like the downstairs part of a barn because like an underground garage it is often quite humid. The loft areas though can be ideal if you bear in mind that the car may not be the only thing over wintering. If you are storing in a barn you have to remember the small furry creatures which can absolutely ruin your car's interior if they decide to move in. To stop them forget the moth ***** inside the car, the smell of those is almost as bad as mouse urine, although scattering them under the car may be a good idea.

What you must do is build a surround to keep the mice out, and this can be done quite simply with heavy gauge plastic onto which the car can be driven and then the sides, front and rear should be pulled up and taped to door handles and other non painted surfaces to create a barrier to rodents who for the most part aren't smart enough to chew through the plastic and get in as there are so many other spots in the barn for them to go. Don't forget the pigeons. A good water proof car cover which you can wash is a good idea to prevent droppings from burning your paint or staining your convertible roof. Also, when a car is stored in a barn where air passes quite freely from the outside to the inside it is a good idea to keep all your windows open a half inch or so to eliminate condensation and to keep the car aired out.

If you are going to store your car outside beside the house, just get it as far away from the nearest road and its airborne salt spray as you can. Don't tarp it up or put a car cover on it unless you can tape it or secure it so that even the strongest winds won't cause it to flap which damages paint by sanding it right off the car. Clear snow from the car so that it doesn't cause a lot of humidity inside and under the hood and in the trunk. Melting snow seems to be more invasive than rain as well so it does not hurt to clear the car off once in an while.

Most cars just get stored in the family garage, and in most cases this is just fine.

 

I 100% agree with the not using underground storage- I've seen boats and motorhomes stored for 3-4 months come out with rust blisters on the frame and all the chrome. Not to mention the musty smelling interior.

Harley makes an inflatable bubble- Thought it was a cool idea until I got to looking at the amount of space it takes up- 4' x 8'.

 

You mean this?



Since that photo was taken, all the wrinkles have worked themselves out & you can see the car clearly.

 

My house is a "raised ranch" or "bi-level", so the garage is half of the lower floor, and is not heated directly unless I turn on the space heater. It appears to me, that this space is more or less ideal for winter storing my Corvette. It stays substantially warmer in the garage than the outside due to heat loss from the floor above and the living space adjacent to the garage, but the humidity in there over the winter is exceedingly low. I never have to worry about freezing coolant should it get weak, and I never find any condensation anywhere in the garage, in the winter that is.

The summer is a differenct story altogether. The slab of the garage stays significantly cooler than the surroundings due to it being largely underground. When I get in the car on warm days, the car often feels cold to the touch. There have been several times already, that when humid weather rolled in, I have seen condensation on the engine when working under the hood. I am sure similar condensation is on the frame and other corrodable parts. I have noticed condensation in other parts of the garage as well, for example, this summer I went to use my feeler gauge and discovered not only that it was wet, but that it had corroded to the point where I couldn't use it and had to throw it away.

My point is that in the Northeast USA, corrosion is much more of a concern for me during the summer, than it is during winter storage, so those bubble things have no use for me. If anyone knows where I can get a cheap, reliable, quiet, low-energy use dehumidifier, I would be interested in that for summer.

 

Those bubble things are just another example of hokey bad science. Moving air is just as humid as still air. It does not blow away 'condensation' as they falsely advertise. If they do have an effective dessicant pack, why continue to blow more humid air inside the bubble?

One guy justified using a bubble by saying that 'tools just bounce off'. I saved the cost of a buying one by simply not throwing tools at my cars in the first place.

Store your car in a place with low humidity and constant temperature. It will last foreverish.

 

I know a guy that has one with a big old ugly Chrysler 4 door inside but he has a dehumidifier sitting on the floor beside the car. Seems to do ok but that dehumidifier wouldn't be cheap to run all the time

 

I use mine (photo above) to keep dust off the car.

 

The reason i brought this up is because my house is on stilts near the coast of south FL. The bottom is closed in and not much circulation and 95%+ humidity most of the time. Before i got back to the states and resumed work on the car (after 4 years or so of sitting untouched unprotected) i rolled it out and the mold was awful. All over the calipers (the worst on the car) the carpet, seats, dash, steering wheel, and so on. Just looking for a way to avoid this in the future. Guess i could just drive it every day. :-) Certainly rethinking the 'bubble' now. Guess it's better garage ventilation, or build my own little version of a bubble with a dehumidifier.

 

I use an "AirChamber" for protection. It is free-standing.

http://www.airflow-uk.com/index.php?...ory=airchamber

 

I'm not sure how this is any better. If you have 60% humidity outside the bubble , you will be blowing 60% humid air into your bubble.
The only way anyone can beat the humid air problem would be to hook up an air conditioner for the intake air. Even a de-humidifier does not strip the same amount of water out that an air-conditioner does.

I'm lucky. Living in Canada and on the prairies , when it get to that -40 F , its cold , but its a dry cold

 

Wait, so that's what I've been doing wrong this whole time! Don't throw tools at car, got it.

 

I insulated the walls, door and ceiling of my garage, put a vapor barrier down on the floor and installed interlocking tiles over that.....interior stays nice and cool/dry during the spring/summer/fall months.

 

Hi GQ,
I'm thinking about a new floor for my garage. What interlocking tiles did you use?
Regards,
Alan

 

POR 15 just came out with a floor coating and you don't have to acid etch the floor. Might be doing this myself.

 

actually what you want to do is somehow Vacumm pack your car for long term storage, negative pressure will cause the moisture to evaporate and no mice or critters can get in...
who will be the 1st to get into this business?!

 

Alan, I used a product called MotorMat. I saw it used in the Chip's Choice display at Carlisle about 5yrs ago (they're still using it). Unfortunately I think the company went out of business as their web site has been down for some time. There are resellers still selling the product but if your interested in something like this I would look into a similar tile called RaceDeck http://www.racedeck.com/

I love this flooring system...it's warm, easy on the feet and cleanup is a snap.