Cold mornings find the weakest part of a car. A battery that spun over happily in October turns sulky in January. A screen wash bottle filled with tap water freezes solid overnight and splits. A tyre that felt fine in the wet becomes a genuine problem on frost and salt. None of this is difficult to prepare for. Half an hour now, plus a modest crate in the boot, is usually the difference between a slow, cold start and a call to a recovery firm.

Here is the kit worth carrying, and the checks worth doing, before the first proper frost.

The twelve things to keep in the car

1. De-icer and a proper scraper. A trigger spray or aerosol, plus a plastic scraper with a decent edge. Credit cards snap, and metal blades scratch glass.
2. A torch. An LED torch or head torch with fresh batteries, kept in the glovebox. Your phone will be needed for a call, so don't drain it lighting up a wheel arch.
3. Jump leads or a lithium jump pack. A jump pack means no second car and no waiting for a stranger. Charge it indoors every few months so it isn't flat when you need it.
4. A warm layer and gloves. An old fleece, a hat and a pair of gloves rolled up in a bag. Keep a waterproof pair for anything involving a wheel brace.
5. Hi-vis vests. One per occupant, stored in the cabin rather than the boot, so you can put one on before stepping into a live lane.
6. A blanket. A cheap fleece or a foil emergency blanket takes up almost no room and matters if you're waiting an hour for recovery in a cold lay-by.
7. Winter screen wash. A bottle of ready-mixed winter strength lives in the boot. Top up weekly. Summer wash diluted for warm weather is exactly what freezes in the jets.
8. A small shovel and a bag of grit. A folding spade plus a sack of sand or grit will get you out of a snow-filled parking space or a soft, wet verge.
9. Charging cable and power bank. A cable that actually works with your phone, and a charged power bank. In-car sockets are slow, and many go dead with the ignition.
10. A warning triangle. Fine on ordinary roads. Don't walk onto a motorway to place one — get yourself and your passengers behind the barrier instead.
11. Snacks and water. Something that keeps in the cold, and water in an insulated bottle. Bottles left in a frosty boot can freeze solid, so check before you rely on them.
12. First aid kit and spare medication. If you take regular medication, keep a small supply in the car and ask a pharmacist how it stores at low temperatures.

Build the crate once, in autumn, and it looks after itself. Replace what you use, and empty the melted de-icer out of it every so often.

Five minutes of checks before you drive

Most winter breakdowns and scrapes come from something visible in daylight but invisible when you're late and the windows are fogged. Walk round the car once a week with the lights on.

• Lights. Sidelights, dipped beam, main beam, indicators, brake lights, fog lights. A rear bulb out in murky weather is both a safety problem and an easy police stop.
• Tyres. Tread depth and pressure. Pressures fall as temperatures drop, and a soft tyre is worse on ice and worse in the wet. The UK legal minimum is 1.6mm, but for winter running most tyre specialists suggest changing well before that — 3mm is a sensible point to start thinking about it.
• Screen and wipers. A wiper blade that smears in autumn will be a menace in sleet. Blades are cheap and fit in minutes.
• Fuel. Keep the tank at least half full. It reduces condensation inside the tank and means you can idle the engine for warmth if you're stuck for a while.
• Demisting. Run the air conditioning with the heater, even in winter. It dries the air and clears the inside of the screen far faster than the heater alone.

Under the bonnet

Coolant

Check the coolant level when the engine is stone cold, using the expansion tank markings. If you're topping up repeatedly, you have a leak and need a garage rather than more antifreeze. Never open a radiator cap on a warm engine — pressurised hot coolant will scald you. If your antifreeze has never been changed, its protection weakens over the years, so ask your garage to check its strength at the next service.

Screen wash

Use a proper winter mix at the strength on the bottle, not a splash of summer fluid in tap water. Weak mix ices in the jets, and a blocked jet in salt spray means pulling over to clear the screen by hand.

Oil and other fluids

Check the oil on level ground with the engine cold, and top up in small steps. Brake, clutch and power steering fluid levels are best left to someone with the right kit — a fluid that keeps dropping is a job for a garage, not a top-up.

The battery is the weak link

Cold slows the chemical reaction inside a battery and makes the engine harder to turn, so a battery with a bit of age will usually pick the first hard frost to give up. Watch for slow cranking, dim lights when you turn the key, or a clicking sound instead of a start. Many garages and parts shops will test a battery quickly, and it's a cheap check compared to a morning spent waiting beside a dead car. If the terminals are crusty, cleaning them and smearing a little petroleum jelly on the posts helps. A car that only does short journeys never really recharges its battery; a monthly longer run does more good than you'd think.

If you do get stuck

Stay with the car unless a safe, well-lit building is genuinely close by. Clear snow away from the exhaust before you run the engine, or you risk exhaust gases collecting around the vehicle, and run it in short bursts rather than continuously. Put a hi-vis on if you're near a road, keep the doors unlocked while you're sitting inside, and be careful not to sit in a car with the engine running if the tailpipe is blocked by snow.

Getting moving again is mostly technique: clear the snow from around the wheels, lay grit or a sack down for grip, straighten the wheels and be gentle on the throttle in second gear rather than spinning the tyres in first.

A routine that pays for itself

None of this needs a special day set aside. Sort the crate once, check the tyres and lights weekly, keep the screen wash topped up, and get the battery tested before the first cold snap. If anything in the checks is beyond you — brakes, fluid leaks, a warning light — hand it to a garage rather than guessing. Ten minutes of looking after the car now saves a miserable hour at the roadside later, and it means the worst the winter can do is make you scrape the windows.

Photo: oskaline / Pixabay