We had our first brush with very cold weather over the last day or so, and it's a reminder our vehicles did, too.

Blake Kroeker's the service manager at Craig Dunn GM in Portage, and tells us the condition of your battery's critical.

"It should be checked every six months, just to make sure," he says. "In the summer it seems okay, but the summer time can kill a battery as well. And when it's got this cold so quick, I've had a few tow-ins with batteries that are dead."

Kroeker Kroeker stresses your block heater cord's an important part of that process.

"Sometimes when you put them away in the spring, they get cracked," he says. "And if they're not making a good connection, they will not give any juice to your block heater, of course, and your car just won't go. It's that cold that the oil is like tar, and it's hard to get it through the engine.

Kroeker adds monitoring your engine's oil is important at this time of year.

"Keep an eye on the whole engine," he says. "When it's cold, it's not just the oil, it's the power steering fluid, and that has oil in it, and the hoses and stuff like that. When it's 30-below, the crimps on them can leak, so make sure there are no leaks on the ground or anything like that, because they could pop out very quickly."