Shutting your car off before it's fully warmed up

[tmorris1]

Originally Posted By: hooligan24
on a 40 degree morning, my srt4's oil takes a 3 minute idle, a 1 mile 25mph trip through the neighborhood, and 12 more miles at 55-60 down a highway to reach 195*F. Coolant will be at 195*f around the 4 mile mark. we have coolant/oil heat exchangers

I will we could have a 40 degree morning...

Coolant and oil temps are 2 different things. Even with a coolant/oil exchanger the oil temp is going to lag the coolant temp. My van also has a coolant/oil heat exchanger behind where the oil filter attached to the engine. There is nothing to worry about anyway as long as you take a longer trip every couple weeks. Its not like there is a quart of water in your sump.

 

[StevieC]

My dad is currently a Delivery driver for a restaurant for pocket money and to keep him busy (retired) and uses my spare Neon to do the deliveries... Right now the restaurant is slow so he only sees a few deliveries a day and is on-call. He starts the car takes off right away, picks up the order which isn't far delivers it and comes home. Round trip is maybe 10KM (6 miles) and shuts the car off. He does this a few times a day and regularly runs the oil to 6,000 miles (10,000KM) with conventional without any problems, or condensation build up on the oil cap/PCV...

 

[WishIhadatruck]

We had a car once upon a time that for about 5 years saw only short trips. We rarely took it farther than 8 miles from the house (wife's work). Later in its life I drove it much more and for farther distances. During the years it was a short tripper the only thing that seemed to suffer was the exhaust which kept rotting out. I gave it away with 212k miles on it and it was still running great other than leaking intake manifold gaskets, a leaking gas tank, and lots of rust. I don't think any of its issues can be attributed to the short trips (except the exhaust).

 

[[RT] ProjUltraZ]

correct if i'm wrong, but wouldn't your temps increase faster if you just parked and idled it? or fast idle if you want to burn more gas. but that's another of my pet peeves - guys who park and rev their motors before shutting down