Vehicles

A working car moves you and a whole stash of loot across the map in minutes — but almost none spawn ready to drive. You have to find the missing parts, fill it up, and then keep the engine alive: in DayZ engines die from overheating, over-revving, water and crashes.

Which vehicles exist

Vehicles spawn at fixed spots spread over the map. The server keeps a target number of each type in the world, so when one is destroyed a new one can turn up somewhere else.

How many you can expect, in vanilla:

• On Chernarus and Livonia the CE aims for about 8 of each car and the M3S truck, but only about 3 M1025s.
• Sakhal has about half as many cars (about 4 of each) and no M1025 at all.
• Nasdara has about 8 of each car, about 6 trucks and about 5 M1025s. Its boat spawns are switched off in vanilla.
• Motorbikes are among the most common vehicles on every map.
• Boats: about 17 on Chernarus, about 5 on Livonia, and on Sakhal about 14 plus about 8 more in black and camo.

Your server can change all of these. See all vehicles in the item list.

What each vehicle needs to start

Every vehicle needs fuel, and cars and motorbikes need all their wheels. The rest depends on the engine:

Car BatteryCarBatteryTruck BatteryTruckBatterySpark PlugSparkPlugGlowplugGlowPlugCar RadiatorCarRadiator

A missing or ruined battery, plug or glow plug stops the engine from starting, and each failure has its own starting sound, so listen to what the engine tells you. If the plug is taken out or ruined while the engine runs, it stops. A ruined engine never starts again.

In the four civilian cars the battery, spark plug and radiator sit in the engine bay: you can only reach them with the hood open and the engine off. On most cars the cargo space is only reachable with the trunk open; it holds 400 slots in the Olga 24, 600 in the M3S and 300 in the other cars. The Ada 4x4 keeps its spare wheel under the hood; the M3S keeps its two spares behind the side panels.

What a vehicle spawns with

Expect to hunt for parts. A freshly spawned civilian car has:

• each of its four wheels with an 80% chance, a spare wheel with 40%
• radiator, battery and spark plug with 60% each
• each headlight bulb with 40%
• doors only about a third of the time, hood and trunk lid one time in five
• fuel between empty and about a third full

The M3S has its battery only one time in four and fewer of its wheels; the M1025 has its glow plug and battery only about one time in three, but usually more of its doors. Motorbikes come with a spark plug about one time in three, rubber boats only one time in ten (one in five on Sakhal).

Batteries, plugs, radiators, wheels, jerrycans and the repair tools are industrial loot — garages, factories, sheds. The Glowplug is scarcer than the Spark Plug everywhere and does not spawn on Sakhal at all. See loot tiers for where the good spots are, and all parts in the item list.

Parts and what they do

Battery. A full Car Battery is good for about 33 starts, a Truck Battery for three times as many, and a damaged battery holds less. A running engine charges it back slowly — one start costs about as much as 100 seconds of running engine puts back. Headlights with the engine off empty a full Car Battery in about half an hour. Once the engine runs, a weak battery no longer matters. The Car Battery fits the cars, the M1025 included; the M3S takes only the bigger Truck Battery. A flat battery can be charged in a Battery Charger that is plugged into a power source such as a Power Generator.

Spark plug and glow plug. The petrol cars, motorbikes and the boat need a Spark Plug; the M1025 needs a Glowplug; the M3S needs neither.

Radiator. Holds the coolant of the four civilian cars. Without one they overheat — see below.

Wheels. Every vehicle takes only its own wheels. A wheel can be damaged in crashes or by gunfire; when it is ruined it turns into a flat, ruined wheel that stays on the car until you replace it. The M3S runs on two single wheels at the front and four M3S Dual Wheel at the rear: two M3S Wheel combine into a dual wheel, and a Crowbar or Tire Iron splits it again. In vanilla, wheels can be taken off attached vehicles and can be damaged while attached; both are server settings, and the server overview shows your server's values.

Headlights. Two bulbs, which need a battery with charge. Loose bulbs do not spawn as loot — you find them boxed:

Boxed Headlight BulbHeadlightH7_Box

Doors, hood and trunk lid. Each car has its own (any colour of the same model fits). They can be damaged and repaired like the body.

Fuel, coolant, oil and brake fluid

Fuel

Every vehicle runs on petrol. Fill a Jerrycan (it holds 20 litres) — or any other liquid container — at the fuel pumps of a gas station and pour it into the tank. When the tank is empty, the engine stops.

The fuel tank is a part of the car's body. Once it is badly damaged, fuel leaks out while the engine runs; a ruined fuel tank ruins the engine with it.

Coolant

Only the four civilian cars use coolant — the radiator takes 6 litres — and coolant is plain water — any drinkable water from a bottle, canteen or jerrycan works, as long as it is not frozen. You can only fill it into an attached radiator that is not ruined.

• Below half full, steam comes out of the engine bay. From then on the engine takes damage every second it runs, the faster the emptier the radiator: with an empty radiator a healthy engine is ruined after roughly three to four minutes of running, at just under half after about twice that.
• A badly damaged radiator leaks coolant while the engine runs.
• Taking the radiator out spills all the coolant. Driving one of these cars without a radiator overheats the engine at the fastest rate.

Oil and brake fluid

The game tracks motor oil and brake fluid, and both leak from a badly damaged engine. But vanilla spawns neither as loot, brake fluid cannot even be poured in, and nothing in the game's scripts depends on how much of either is left. You can ignore both.

What kills an engine

• Overheating: too little coolant, as above.
• Over-revving: running the engine at the redline damages it a little every second; pushing it past its maximum revs costs 5% of the engine's health every second — about 20 seconds from healthy to ruined.
• Water: once the engine is under water for more than half a second, it takes heavy damage every second — a car's engine is ruined after about three seconds, a motorbike's after about seven.
• A ruined fuel tank, and hard crashes.

A ruined engine cannot be repaired, and the vehicle will not start again.

Crashes

Damage depends on how hard the vehicle hits:

• Light bumps do nothing.
• Harder hits damage only the part of the vehicle that hit — a bumper, a fender, a light — and the parts behind it. On the Ada 4x4, for example, a hit to the front bumper also damages the hood, the radiator, the front wheels and the engine.
• A heavy crash spreads the damage through the vehicle, and everyone inside loses health and takes shock, enough to knock them out.
• A really violent crash kills everyone inside at once.

Leaving a moving vehicle hurts. Jumping out of a car above about 8 km/h damages your legs and clothes — more the faster you go — and may cause shock (a helmet halves it). Below about 30 km/h you also get a bleeding wound; above that the wound is on your head, unless you wear headgear. Jumping off a boat costs only a little health. See injuries for treating what you get.

Repairing

A repair moves the damaged part up one step — Badly damaged to Damaged, Damaged to Worn. Nothing gets back to Pristine, and a Worn part cannot be improved. A ruined part cannot be repaired at all: replace it.

Epoxy PuttyEpoxyPuttyBlowtorchBlowtorchLarge Gas CanisterLargeGasCanisterTire Repair KitTireRepairKitElectrical Repair KitElectronicRepairKitPlankWoodenPlankTarpFabric

• Epoxy Putty, the Tire Repair Kit and the Electrical Repair Kit each last four repairs; planks are used up one per repair.
• The Blowtorch needs an attached gas canister with enough gas left, and repairing an engine wears the blowtorch down.
• Radiators, spark plugs, glow plugs and headlight bulbs cannot be repaired with any kit — replace them.
• Duct tape repairs nothing on a vehicle.

Motorbikes

The Jana 50 and the Bitrak 682 need only fuel, a spark plug and their two wheels — no battery. They are repaired with a blowtorch only. Riding fast chills you through the wind; the Bitrak's shields (Motorbike Shield) cut some of that out.

Boats

The Rubber Boat needs fuel and a spark plug, nothing else. Its engine stops as soon as the propeller comes out of the water. You can push a boat (or a car) by hand, for example to get a beached boat back into the water.

Boats slowly decay when nobody is around: while no player is within about 300 metres, the boat's engine loses a little health every ten seconds. Left alone, a healthy engine is ruined after about two days — after about half a day if the boat lies upside down. Parked within about 100 metres of an active territory flag it decays at only about a third of the speed, so it lasts about a week — another reason to keep it near your base. Vanilla's decay speed is a server setting, and the server overview shows your server's.

Staying warm and dry

Sitting in a car with the engine running keeps you at a comfortable temperature no matter the weather. Inside a car, rain and snow do not soak you and wet clothes dry — handy on Sakhal. Motorbikes and boats do the opposite: the faster you go, the colder the wind makes you. See temperature and clothing.