7 important ways to get your car ready for spring

Winter is shifting toward spring in much of the US, and that means it's time to get your car ready for warmer weather.

Here are five simple things you can do to make sure you have a happy season of motoring — and make your car feel all shiny and new at the same time.

Wash winter off your car and get it detailed.

This is a deep-dish cleaning of the vehicle, inside and out. It depends on the type of car or truck you own, and how old it is, but for newer vehicles, it's worth it.

Spring is the ideal time to do it. For $100 to $200, a detailer will get down and dirty with the interior, bring you car back as close as possible to showroom condition and cleanliness; this means vacuuming, shampooing, treating leather and plastic surfaces, and extracting all the ground in gunk from hard-to-reach places.

Outside, a thorough washing will be accompanied by waxing, buffing, polishing, and a tire treatment. After dealing with snow, ice, slush, and road salt for three or fours months, your newly detailed car will thank you.

Touch up the paint and have dings and dents repaired.

This doesn't always mean a trip to the body shop. You can buy small bottles of automotive paint to fill in small scrapes and scratches. It isn't a professional job, but it will at least prevent the enemy of sheet metal — rust — from gaining a foothold.

More substantial body damage does entail a visit to the body shop, and then things start to get pricey. But if you want to keep your car in good cosmetic condition, you will want to spend the money. Selling your vehicle later in a person-to-person transaction, usually more lucrative than selling to a dealer or trading in, generally means that a buyer will pay top dollar only for a car that looks good.

Check your oil.

Modern vehicles perform so well that they don't need oil changes as frequently as cars did in the past.

But that doesn't mean they never need oil changes. And the shift of seasons is always a fine time to to make sure your engine oil is up to snuff. If you're running low, it could be an indication that there's a more significant problem with your motor. 

You can also use the change of seasons as a guide to automatic oil changes. I change my oil twice a year. That's less often than recommended, given 10-15,000 miles of annual driving, but I've never had a problem (plus, some car makers recommend oil changes less frequently than the traditional 3,000 miles).

So the math goes like this: you change oil when winter slips into spring, and then six months later, as summer morphs into fall.