Warm up idling

[dcoyne78]

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One final comment and I will let this die until next winter. This past weekend was pretty cold here in Maine (-12 F at 6 AM) and I was on a ski trip so my car was parked outside from Friday night around 9 PM to 7 PM Saturday with no starts in between, high during the day was 10 F and by 7 PM had dropped back to 3 F. My daughter was waiting for me to pick her up and was standing outside waiting for me, so I started and drove off as usual. Bad idea!

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But you didn't give us a reason why you thought it was a bad idea.

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Sorry, I thought it would be obvious why it was a bad idea. The engine sounded much louder than usual, valve train noise, I think (I am no mechanic but it sounded like the upper part of the engine). It has been a while since I have parked my car outside on a regular basis, especially in the winter I keep it in the garage so I won't have to clear the windows in the morning. In Maine we occasionally see -10 F but not on a daily basis so I guess when I have gone skiing in the past I either didn't have extremely cold temps or if I did I had the good sense to let the car warm up a bit before driving. In this particular case I just got in, started the car and drove off gently through the parking lot. Maybe a 30 second warm up would have been enough, but my guess is that 2-3 min would have been better, hard to say for sure but in the future I will let it idle a bit until the engine quiets down. My Prius doesn't have a temp or oil pressure gauge, just idiot lights so I have to go by how it sounds.
For all those who are concerned about windows fogging up etc, I didn't have this problem. I think the dearth of snow this year in Maine has kept the inside of the car pretty dry and the moisture from my breath doesn't seem to fog things up when its between 0 and 5 F. Maybe colder temps would cause more of a problem, I am sure its a whole different ball game at -20 to -40 F, but I rarely see such cold winter weather (I have seen -20 F maybe once in 10 years here in Maine). I imagine the people from S. Dakota and Ontario see some pretty severe weather and folks from Alaska would be thinking, "At -10 F I don't even wear a coat, but I do warm up my car a couple minutes."

 

[dcoyne78]

One last question on fuel wash while idling. Is this a problem with fuel injected engines and does the answer depend on whether it is TBI or direct injection? I would think with modern engines this is less of a problem than older engines.

 

[Patman]

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One final comment and I will let this die until next winter. This past weekend was pretty cold here in Maine (-12 F at 6 AM) and I was on a ski trip so my car was parked outside from Friday night around 9 PM to 7 PM Saturday with no starts in between, high during the day was 10 F and by 7 PM had dropped back to 3 F. My daughter was waiting for me to pick her up and was standing outside waiting for me, so I started and drove off as usual. Bad idea!

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But you didn't give us a reason why you thought it was a bad idea.

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Sorry, I thought it would be obvious why it was a bad idea. The engine sounded much louder than usual, valve train noise, I think (I am no mechanic but it sounded like the upper part of the engine).

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But if this is the case, then wouldn't you want to get the engine warmed up as quickly as you can? And idling it is not the quickest way to warm it up, driving it gently will warm it up quicker than idling.

 

[va3ux]

Skyjumper, if you have a block heater, try repeating your tests when the outside temps are colder. I've done the same as you on my 2.7 Intrepid. Without cold overnight air temps and with the block heater plugged-in, oil is flowing in literally 3 seconds. Without the block heater, it can take a minute or longer until I see oil flowing. And that's with temps in the high teens / low 20s.

Phil

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m I take a flashlight and have a look-see inside the filler hole. I've done this at various temps from 0F to 60F so I have a good idea of the time it takes.... ~25 sec at 60F, ~90s @ 20F, ~160s at 0F (for a "typical" 5W30). exact time of course depends on the oil.

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[Drew99GT]

I pretty much have to let my car warm up for upwards of 5 minutes or so when it's super cold to melt frost and get heat blowing out the vents for the windshield. My car fogs worse than any other I've seen. Yesterday morning I just started and went on my way, and had to pull over to let the fog clear. #@$%! near ran up over a curb!

Plus, it's fun to watch windshield cracks grow as the heat and cold clash.

 

[sky jumper]

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Skyjumper, if you have a block heater, try repeating your tests when the outside temps are colder. I've done the same as you on my 2.7 Intrepid. Without cold overnight air temps and with the block heater plugged-in, oil is flowing in literally 3 seconds. Without the block heater, it can take a minute or longer until I see oil flowing. And that's with temps in the high teens / low 20s.

Phil

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m I take a flashlight and have a look-see inside the filler hole. I've done this at various temps from 0F to 60F so I have a good idea of the time it takes.... ~25 sec at 60F, ~90s @ 20F, ~160s at 0F (for a "typical" 5W30). exact time of course depends on the oil.

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a block heater huh? I may have to look into that. how/where do you plug it in? do you have the plug mounted on the front grill or something?

it's been cold in Chicago recently and I've taken some new cold flow measurements with Maxlife Syn 5W30. it flows much faster than GC did last winter. at 20F it first begins to flow at about 20sec, and is pretty much gushing by 50 or 60sec. I understand GC is thick - but so is Maxlife Syn 5W30 (I haven't bothered to calculate the cSt at 20F to compare, but I know it's thicker than most 30wts). I'm really surprised by how much oil type affects cold flow.

do you guys ever notice higher wear metals in a post-winter UOA as compared to samples drawn from summer driving??

 

[Patman]

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do you guys ever notice higher wear metals in a post-winter UOA as compared to samples drawn from summer driving??

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I do in my wife's car, as she drives it hard (even on a cold engine) and does shorter trips. But for my car it's pretty much the same, since I drive very gentle when the engine is cold, plus I almost always drive 20-25 miles or more whenever I start the engine. So my oil spends more time at full operating temp than it does at lower temps, while my wife's oil spends more of it's time well below operating temp (which is one of the reasons I switched her over to 5w20 recently, so hopefully her winter UOAs will be much better)

 

[dcoyne78]

Patman,
I might have only needed 30 sec, I also had to drive up a hill after driving only 1/4 of a mile, I took it very slow, but the engine did not sound as if it was fully warmed up. Under these circumstances, in cold weather (close to 0 F or -18 C) when you need to put some load on the engine, I agree with those who want a little warmup (2 or 3 minutes may be plenty). Under most circumstances I think your advice of 30 seconds then go gently works ok, but I would want to be going on flat ground or downhill during the warmup drive if its 0 F or lower.

 

[va3ux]

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a block heater huh? I may have to look into that. how/where do you plug it in? do you have the plug mounted on the front grill or something?

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Yep. It's got a "power cord" on it that you plug into an extension cord. On mine, it also powers a battery heater (like an electric blanket around the battery). My car came equipped with this as a factory option. In southern Ontario we really don't need to use these things very often like they do farther up north or out in western Canada. But I use it when we get down into single digit temps or even the low teens. It makes an unbelievable difference. After sitting cold all night, first start-up in the morning and oil is flowing instantly, as if the engine had been running all day.

You can have one installed. It's basically a heating element that's in the water jacket.

 

[grampi48]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with long-idle period warm ups. If anything, a slower warm up is better for the engine. In fact, I put over 300K miles on a vehicle that spent every winter morning idling for 10-15 minutes. Besides, there's nothing nicer than climbing into a nice, toasty car on a cold winter morn.

 

[toocrazy2yoo]

Not sure if it's a good idea in a new car, though. These cats are CLOSE to the engine now, my Hyundai's is directly behind the radiator. Exhaust manifold is 4 inches off the block before it hits the catalytic converter.

So, if you're idling 10 and 15 minutes, aren't you dumping a lot of gas and really heating up the cat?

 

[DragRace]

toocrazy2yoo,

Warming your vehicle up wont hurt a thing. Engineers take things like this into consideration when they design a vehicle.

Anyways, looks like I'll be warming my vehicles up,gonna be a cold weekend /week again

 

[4esorselrahc]

And I thought it was cold...

 

[DragRace]

Yup these are actual temperatures,this is not including the wind chills

 

[AndyH]

DragRace: Not much better here in MN:

 

[dailydriver]

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Yup these are actual temperatures,this is not including the wind chills

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WOW! Now I know why "things don't move too rapid in Rapid City, S.D.", to paraphrase Kinky (Friedman, that is).

 

[Stainless]

I JUST (last thur) changed over from PP 5W-30 to Mobil 1 0W-20. It fires up SO much easier, and I still let it warm for 10 min.

This isn't Ohio like. It is cold for us:

 

[toocrazy2yoo]

Jeez, well, for US here in No. Va., it's gonna be highs in the low-mid 20's, with single digit lows, 8 or 9 for a couple of nights.

Makes me all warm and fuzzy I went to the 5W20 QS 4x4 Torque-Power clear bottle on the 2-4-1 deal a couple of weeks back.

 

[BlazerLT]

Oh wow, the Toronto Star, the #1 source of Automotive knowlege on earth.

 

[CharBaby]

grampi48,
I couldn't agree with you more! I too have put in access of 300,000 miles on vehicles that idled often on very cold mornings/evenings. Especially when taking the children to school and school events, hockey practice and just bad winter conditions ahead.