No warm up, straight to highway speeds in the AM, any problems?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
Feb 16, 2004
Messages
1,139
Location
USA
I live beside a highway and in the mornings when I leave for work, there isn't a way to get the engine to operating temp before I hit 70mph.

How long can I expect to keep doing this before my engine decides to call it quits?

I drive a honda accord that gets all preventative maint. done somewhat on time.
 
Mobil 1 oil filters are restrictive. They filter better then they flow so don't use them in your application.
Just give your car a few minutes to warm up before you hit the road. Then hit 70MPH slowley in the right lane.
 
What you are doing is not that hard on the vehicle. Once up to highway speed and the acceleration out of the way you have an optimal situation. The fluids will not linger at colder temps and the engine will be warmed up quickly. IMO This is the ideal.
Start it up, put on your seat belt, accelerate gently to cruising speed. no stop and go, no idling at lights no repeated cold accelerations. Just one, a 0-70 acceleration and cruise.

It's great. I am staying at a place where we driv e about a mile to the highway at 30-40 mph and then hit the highway for 15 miles to get anywhere. I am feeling really good about this tratment.
My only suggestion is to make that acceleration to hwy speeds as gently as you can safely do so.
 
Currently I'm running Valvoline HM 10w30 with a Supertech filter. I have no plans to use synthetic in this car.

quote:

My only suggestion is to make that acceleration to hwy speeds as gently as you can safely do so.

So noted.

Thanks for the reassurance.
 
Just like they said above, just get up to speed as gently as possible. There was another thread on warming up cars, and someone asked a similar question. The answer was that being at highway speed isn't the problem, its accelarating to highway speed with a cold engine that's the problem.
 
Yes, just avoid full throttle operation when the engine is cold. Modern engines have modest coolant capacity and warm up quite quickly under light load.
 
The thing you have to remember is that oil gets to operating temps much more slowly than coolant (especially if you have an oil cooler). I can attest to this in my Audi twin turbo as I have an oil temp gauge (I have seen it take about 12 minutes in cold weather)...I try to keep shifts at 3000 RPM or under for the first few minutes.
 
Yep, the posts say it right.

Accelerate as slow as possible, and try to keep the shift rpms as low as possible.

In your case it would likely be best to let it sit and idleuntil the rpms drop to about 1000 or so, if it starts much higher than that...

JMH
 
quote:

Accelerate as slow as possible, and try to keep the shift rpms as low as possible.

I would advise against the low-rpm shifts.
If you have a manual tranny, up-shift normally at around 3,000 rpm and by any means avoid lugging the engine.
 
well of course in a MT you would not want to lug the engine. But I can shoft all of my MT cars well below 3000 RPM without lugging.

Auto trans cars can be modulated somewhat by driving (as you should with ANY vehicle) as if you had an egg between your foot and the throttle.

JMH
 
You may want to look at a 5W-30 dino especially if you have cold winters. Isn't Honda saying 5W-20? My cars are happy on 5W-30 in the winter. No highway, but I do have a hill with a stop sign at the bottom to go up while the engine is cold.
 
quote:

I would advise against the low-rpm shifts.
If you have a manual tranny, up-shift normally at around 3,000 rpm and by any means avoid lugging the engine.

I totally agree with this. I have this same car. On flat or downhill roads, one can shift at 2700-2800 rpm easily, and the engine will feel totally fine. When going uphill, especially on a cold engine, its way better to shift at 3200-3500 rpm. As much as it stinks to rev higher on a cold engine, trying to apply anything more than light load at less than 2200 rpm will make the thing feel awful! My engine feels more susceptible to lugging when cold too.

Seotaji, I put an oil temperature gauge in my car. In my case, the oil takes ~8 miles (2 city miles, 6 freeway miles) to get to 180° in the summer, and one extra freeway mile in winter.
 
BTW, why did this get moved to the GC/Euro section?
dunno.gif
 
seotaji and Palut, I have seen some Honda 2.2 engines with oil intercoolers where you mount the oil filter.

Could you tell us if yours has this? Surely it would help warm up the oil faster.

Knowing if Palut has the intercooler, for example, allows others to extrapolate his data to their engine.

I agree that 3,000rpm is a breeze for these engines, that is my general shift point during normal acceleration and from there on up the power increases nicely for more demanding situations. Mine is a 1991.
 
I don't have any type of oil cooler installed. There's nothing on the oil filter mount except for the oil filter itself, so I imagine that my data would extrapolate well to other cars with this engine.
 
One other thing to consider. I never hear any valve-train noise, even on the first start after an oil change. When I pulled the valve cover, I saw why. There is a big groove underneath the camshaft where a lot of oil was pooled. It looks like one doesn't have to worry too much about dry starts in the top end of this engine.
 
Palut, the oil intercooler I refer to is not an add-on, Honda put it on some of their 2.2 engines, perhaps only those that see higher workloads like the first generation Odyssey with F22B6 and the fourth generation wagon with F22A6. If you see no coolant hoses just above your oil filter mount then there is no intercooler there.

Thank you for your clarifications. What year and trim is your Accord?
 
Just one mans observation-a friend and fellow worker has with every car he has owned,started and gone to WOT(before the drivers door could close) because he tried to beat the traffic out of the parking lot.Known him for 30 years and every car or truck he owned was blowing blue smoke by the second winter.for what its worth
 
If you get really cold weather I'd consider altering your routine to get just a little heat in it before you get on the highway.

Other than that, I'm sure it will be fine. I agree with the notion of using low throttle settings and medium revs rather than higher throttle settings and lower revs. In fact BMW programs this into some of their engines as a startup behavior to get some heat into the auto tranny quicker. You'll have good oil flow at medium revs, and low combustion forces. In a higher gear you'd have less oil flow and much higher combustion forces.

- Glenn
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top