Warming your car up in cold weather
 

How long do you warm your car up in cold weather? Do you start it and go or wait 2 minutes or 10. Just curious?

Start and go. Drive fairly conservatively until you get some indication of temp gauge movement. Use the fast idle for power and keep revs around 2k. You have oil pressure virtually immediately.

I have done this with all my cars, my 99 Max, bought new, has 144k miles and uses practical no oil whatsoever. Just got the vlave cover gaskets replaced after 3k miles with less than 1/4 quart oil loss.

I do have a garage so I don't have to worry about frost-snow-ice.

regards
Mech

There is no advantage in letting your car idle, get it ready to go ,clean windshield and anything else needed for safety, put on your seatbelt, start the car and drive it gently until it reaches normal operating temperature.

Unless you like burning your money and emitting excessive air pollution, 30 seconds is all that is needed after firing up the engine. A block heater will do wonders in cold weather too.

Modern oil filers have anti drain back check valves. Even my 1937 Ford would produce oil pressure in 5 seconds cranking at 100 RPM with the original 6 volt starter which was direct drive, or you could crank it by hand!

Oil pressure is produced virtually instantly, long before the gauge reads oil pressure. in probably twenty revolutions of the engine, maybe less. If your windows are clear drive away immediately after starting the engine. By the time you have it in gear you have max oil pressure especially in a cold engine. In fact the pressure relief valve is already dumping excess oil pressure.

regards
Mech

In winter time i put warm water bottles on the dash, plug in my portable extra battery and then go outside to remove ice/snow from my car.

When i'm done with that i get everything ready before starting, including being in 1st and letting off the hand brake. I do let the engine come down a bit from the initial surge, so maybe 0.6s between starting and going.

i start and drive thru the gears up to 5th. at ca. 80km/ (50mph), than cut fuel with the kill switch and coast in 5th down to 50 (30). i hope compresion and friction will make a little contribution, without any fuel. after that i accel up a second time and coast to the main road. if trafic is ok, 1 or 2 times may follow. the first part of this vid showes...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwLDS...9aAUAAAAAAAAAA

Superb video kurzer. I might learn some German watching that one a few times ;). Pulse a glide may extend your warm up times, but at least you are using the higher fuel consumption for something. I have found that it helps your mileage to pulse and glide even with a cold engine.

regards
Mech

The German is brief. First one says water temperature. Second says tachometer. Third says fuel injectors off. Fourth one says shows 0 when injectors are off (referring to the tach).

I warm up my engine while P&G, too. I'm 4 miles down the road, averaging ~50 mpg, before my low coolant temp light goes off at 137 degrees F.

I usually try to avoid any excess idle and get going as soon as possible. When the weather is below 10*C (50F) I will use the block heater.
During winter I will also use the car interior pre-heater to defrost the windows.

If it is not possible to use any preheating and the windows are covered with ice, I will start the engine and put on the defrosting and scratch the windows clean within 2 minutes and get going.
Safety comes always first. You must see where you are going.
In Finland we have a law that prohibits any idling longer than 2 minutes.

I'm convinced. My MPG as dropped so much this winter I have got to do something. I normally warm my truck up 5 mins prior to taking off.

I P&G with no EOC until it warms up, then I start P&EOC'ing. My '65 Ford truck needs 5 minutes to warm up before driving (or it stalls easily) but the '81 VW and the Probe need no time at all. Start and go. I put the Probe in first gear before starting it. If I'm parked nose up on an incline I back out with the car turned off, stop at the side of the street, put it in first, turn it on and go.

My "Plastic spaceship" which is my all year round family transportation vehicle has an 2L gasoline engine and according to MPGuino it consumes 1,15L/h at idle when totally warm.
After 1-2hour preheating it will take about 2,2L/h right after start.
And cold start at freezing temps it can take about 5L/h at idle

Re: anti-idling laws: We need to be more like Finland. Yes, I don't like more and more laws but the people have proven incapable of common sense on their own. :rolleyes:

Well, the most stupid behaviour, I have seen, is that a guy comes to his car in the morning (temps above 10*C ,50F and absolutely no need for pre-heating) opens the door, starts the engine, gets outside the car and smokes a cigarette before leaving. And this happens every morning.

Why does he want to spend extra money for... what? What's the benefit?

See it all the time. Was at a gas station the other day and watched a guy shut it off to fill (well, gotta give him a bonus point for that at least) then start it up again only to sit in the passenger seat waiting for what seemed an eternity for his fat-a$$ed girlfriend to come back outta the C-store.

And then there are the autostarts. Ooooooh, the autostarts. :rolleyes:

IIRC, the USA does have an EPA 3 minute idling law on the books, going back ~30 years. I'll search for it.

Edit: Looks like I was wrong. There's an EPA model idling law available for state adoption since 2004 limiting idling to 5 minutes.

I'd fall over from shock if I actually saw it enforced! :eek:

It would follow that autostarts that allow more than 3 minutes of operation are illegal right? :)

It's a cultural thing AFAIK, the worst thing you can do socially in America is to come across as a cheapskate.

Defrost the windows, start the car and get going right away.

In winter it takes my car 10 minutes of driving moderately to reach the normal operation temperature.

Wait, you live in Eugene Oregon and you warm your vehicle up for 5 minutes? I lived out there for a year and it never even got cold! at least not cold enough to have to warm up a vehicle before driving it.
Even last week when it was -5F I didn't bother warming up my car much longer then it takes to put my seat belt on, I do have an electric ceramic heater on the dash to help keep the windshield frost free because it takes just over ten minutes to get to work and I'm less then a mile a way before the engine is warm enough for the defrost to start working, then I park in the sun if I can so the inside of my car is already warmed up when it's time to go home.

Californians and whatnot think 65 deg is cold.

Its not?

I usually park in a garage, and my car is ready to go immediately. If I don't park in a garage, I'll wipe the interior windshield with a rag and open the side windows for a moment while I'm driving. I just can't be bothered to wait to go somewhere, and I certainly don't like to waste money.

When I park on hills, I will coast until engine power is needed and then roll start in 2nd gear.

This is a very slippery slope indeed. I'd like to force people to make good decisions too, but that is not my place. We would end up with a law that made it a crime to idle a car because people like to stay warm, but perfectly legal for me to pour a barrel of oil out on my lawn and dance around the flames. Of course, we would have to outlaw the Bugatti Veyron and scores of other vehicles well before we outlawed excessive idle.

If you want to impose good judgement, the biggest benefit (for society) would be something along the lines of prohibiting poor or stupid people from procreating. Who is too poor, too stupid, or what is excessive idling? See what I'm getting at.

I have noticed a pattern of poor decision making skills by those that frequent convenience stores. My observations were made as a passenger in one of these running cars while the driver ran inside to grab a pack of cancer.

There is some truth to this, but it mostly comes down to ignorance. Old cars used to run like garbage when they were cold, so people warmed them up. Where do we get advice? -from old people. Old habits die hard.

:thumbup:

Seriously though, I think the only thing that'll do the trick is really high prices.

I have adopted everyones recommendations here. I start my car and am out the driveway in 30 seconds. Just take it easy for a minute or two and get up to speed and drive to work. No harm yet.

____


Still laughing!!!!:D:D:D

Come here and we can discuss it over a nice cup of iced everything.

I use a block heater & my oil pan heaters--and then I start driving BEFORE I start my engine:D

I back up the driveway so in the morning I can coast out the driveway and down the street to the stop sign before starting the engine.


And what really makes me cringe is when I see somebody start a cold engine and then rev it several times to warm it up. I think, "Not only are you wasting fuel, but you have no idea how much damage you're doing to that engine!"

I let mine run for about 5 minutes with remote start if its below freezing. If it's below zero F I'll let it run for 15 minutes - Its really hard to drive when you can't move for the shivering :)
Above freezing and I'll start it with remote start as I walk towards it - It usually finishes the turbo test by the time I get to the drivers door, and I just drive away.
I have tried starting it and just driving immediately, but it puts out a huge cloud of brownish black smoke and retards the engine pretty severely for the first 15-20 seconds.

Also, in the summer time I turn the "Quiet Start" feature on - it makes it low idle if I do remote start it. In the winter I turn "Quiet Start" back off since it makes it high idle to warm up faster.

Hmm, hadn't heard that about the Ecoboost. My turbodiesel is good to go right after it fires up. Then again, I don't think I've ever tried it when it's gotten down to zero.

And as far as the shivering goes, I just wear my big winter coat, gloves, and a winter hat, since I refuse to run my heater until my engine warms up--unless the windows start fogging up and I can't take care of that by rolling the window down a crack.

Put that remote in front of the tire and drive over it the next time you go somewhere.

If it doesn't run right for the first 20 seconds I'd wait 25 seconds to let off the clutch.

Letting cars warm up is, like others say, a legacy thing. If your car made in the past 30 years doesn't run correctly right off the bat you should either experiment with letting it warm up for 30 seconds or figure out what's wrong with it.

Even my carbureted 1980 Chevy pickup is driveable in cold weather after warming up for only a minute or two. And that's without a choke.

I will move it as soon as the torque converter is filled up, maybe 10 seconds. even a large diesel truck can be driven conservatively while it warms up. You'll hear all sorts of horror stories and cautionary tales about cold transmission parts and things not being equalized, but the key is no boost and very little torque. I can move a loaded 18 wheeler along cold without taxing any part of the drive train, provided I'm not holding up traffic while doing so.

Here below 41F and above 80F its perfectly legal to idle as long as you want. I don't know why everyone is trying to force their opinion and the way to do things down everyone else's throats. I see it as worth it to get into a car that's 72F for a $20 a gas in idling a winter...

I'm not selling anything, my problem is, my 12 valve cummins sounds like not-so-distant thunder in the carport :p

Nobody is forcing anything.

But if you join a fuel economy forum, you should expect that people will be discussing ways to reduce fuel consumption, not waste it idling.

There are several better ways to pre-heat your vehicle than by letting it sit idling.

If that concept gets your hackles up, you're on the wrong forum.

A V8 engine idling warm is wasting .5 gallons of fuel an hour. My old Insight would go 40 MPH on that same amount of fuel for an hour.

So would my bike.

13% of all the fuel consumed in the US is wasted idling.

Start it and go, you might as well cover some ground with the same fuel you are wasting right now.

Not trying to make any do anything except put money in their pockets, hopefully for a better purpose. Heck even buying Twinkies would be better.

regards
Mech

There is at least one member advocating the forcing of the issue. That gets my hackles up and I am, apparently, pretty on board with not wasting fuel.

Anyway even down to 30 below I don't bother letting the car come up to full temp before driving. I start the car, get out unplug it, scrape the windshields then get in and drive off. Once the temp gauge comes off the peg I turn the heater on. The extra minute or so of idle gets the defrost that much closer to a functional temp before I leave the low speed area of the neighborhood.