Cold Engine on Highway

[friendly_jacek]

Originally Posted By: Sawdusted
Guys, I live about 1/2 mile from the freeway entrance. 1/2 mile of city street driving with minimal traffic. Usually by the time I hit the freeway everyone drives at the 70MPH speed limit btw, the temp gauge would have just started moving.


If that bothers you, get plug in block heater. You will save on fuel and engine wear.

 

[demarpaint]

I have a similar situation here with three traffic lights. I usually get stuck with at least one of them all the time. My engine is never warm when I get on the highway, in fact with my van the temp gauge just started to move. As long as you gradually get up to speed there's no problem. I've dealt with this for the 37+ years I've been driving, no engine problems resulted that I'm aware of.

 

[Sawdusted]

Thank you for the advice guys. I'll go slow and steady.

Actually 70mph on the corolla is about 2.5K RPM whereas for the Sentra, I'd be going about 4K RPM. The Sentra needs a 6th gear. It definitely has the power, and could do better on fuel economy with a 6th.

 

[285south]

It takes 6 miles to warm up the motor. Don't ask me for the source, never saved it.

 

[SHOZ]

I've lived in the country for the last 40 years. As soon as I'm out of the driveway the speed limit is 55 mph and then a 30 mile drive.

On my latest car I put on a ford oil filter mount oil/coolant heat exchanger. It cut the time in half for the oil to warm up.

 

[Virtuoso]

Don't sweat a thing! Just avoid WOT until she's completely warmed up if you can. I try to limit RPM's to 3k during warm up. Otherwise, that highway driving is going to warm things up quickly with little stress on the drive train.

 

[Thermo1223]

I drove my previous Forester to work every morning to a highway on-ramp that was 0-50 at least in 4-5 secs. If not you cause an accident or become one.

Many mornings were 0-10F, gearbox stiff as can be. I ran synthetic after me moved but I couldn't do oil changes myself and I'll be darned if the dealer is getting almost $100 for that.

So I ran Subaru dealer bulk oil, and they never used synthetic in turbo motors until recently.

The car had auto climate control and wouldn't begin heating till the coolant went past 120F so I had some put-put traffic up to the highway. Mostly idling at lights and some slow 30-40mph traffic. Just about every time I'd reach the highway I would hear the fan start slowly spinning. That meant coolant was at or close to 120F somewhere but as we know oil wasn't.

Regardless I had to do a WOT pull in first & second gear to get up to speed. I did that for almost 2 years with nothing bad resulting. Engine ran just as well when I bought the car to when I sold it right under 100k. I even went through various tunes as well.

I wouldn't give it another 2 secs of thought. Anyone who putts to speed on a busy road/highway because they are worried about their poor cold engine needs to not drive on said road then. They are not as important as they want to believe they are.

 

[jrustles]

I used to cringe leaving work in the dead of -20C winter with my old 0.79OD/4.4FD ratio. The onramp was less than 500M from work, and in less than a minute or two, I could be cruising at 4200rpm easily in traffic , and the temp gauge has barely moved.

Spoiler: engine is still running well