If it’s an older car or a beater this doesn’t apply, but if there’s a fair amount of value to the car….
I would check and see what it costs to insure it with only comprehensive coverage on it. It might only run you $6 or $7 a month. The liability and collision portions of auto insurance are what make up most of the premium.
If your house burns down, the car is stolen, or while horsing around in the garage you or your kids (if you have them) have a hammer slip out of your hands and smash a window, or your wife hits it while parking, or you park it in the driveway and a hail storm rolls through—everything I listed would still be covered.
In addition there would be no lapse of insurance which more and more effects your insurance score. Just make sure your insurance company understands that you intend to reinstate coverage on the vehicle and don’t want to cancel the policy. Avoid canceling a policy unless it’s on a vehicle you sold or got rid of that you’re never going to insure again.
Tell them you want to suspend coverage on your policy for future reinstatement.
There’s a big difference between suspending coverage and canceling coverage. Insurance scores or like credit; you want a long uninterrupted history of doing the right thing. Most companies allow your to earn discounts over time that you’d lose by canceling the policy. When you cancel that means they’ll have to rewrite you a new policy when you want coverage on it. This means you’ll be rated again for this new policy. If your credit score is slightly less than what it was when the other policy was written, or even something as minor as there now being a lapse of coverage on the vehicle, could cause you to get a rating less than your other policy and wind up paying more for the same exact coverage. Insurance companies value “continuous coverage.” They view you as a better insured and a lower risk if you have continuous coverage.
So just make sure that it’ll be the same policy being reinstated when you want it covered again. Having to write a new policy doesn’t benefit you or the company. Avoid it if at all possible.
Other than that I’ll reiterate what others have said; run it once a month and let it fully warm up. Your lines, seals, all that stuff can break down and crack if it isn’t used for a long period of time. Make sure you don’t fill it up with anything that’s got ethanol in it before storing. When you’re driving it regularly you go through gas fast enough where it isn’t a concern but the ethanol absorbs moisture into your gas over time. Basically it puts water in your gas. I’d leave a quarter tank or less of non-oxygenated, non-ethanol gasoline in it for storing it. I’d rather have too little gas in it to where I’d have to dump a little fresh gas in every so often in order to run it once a month versus having it sit with a full tank of aging gas.
It’s probably not a huge deal since it doesn’t sound like it will be in storage real long but you never know…..