What's current best practice for warming up a vehicle?

[Cujet]

Here we go.... Let's hear how folks in the south (FL, etc) deal with frost/ice/snow and windows that NEED defrosted and just "start it and go".

It gets cold here too. Skim ice forms on the lakes at 55ºF in South Florida. I now use 25W-60 oil in my Cessna, perfect for the cold weather lately. You can see the ice starting to form on the lake...

 

[BrianF]

Well, when its -40, I like to idle whatever vehicle it is until its pumping heat and thaws the windshield enough that I can scrape it. Actually, I'll do that anytime its cold.

 

[Hall]

Skim ice forms on the lakes at 55ºF in South Florida.

Call me skeptical....

 

[Marcozi]

Lugging is bad for the rod bearings.

What is the source of your claim?

 

[spasm3]

What is the source of your claim?

Not the source, but a source. Really it's common knowledge that lugging an engine is bad for main and rod bearings.

On this poster below, look under the photo " Spinning of the bearing in the housing "

https://studylib.net/doc/18157871/10-most-common-bearing-failures-poster

 

[Cujet]

Call me skeptical....

So curiosity got the better of me and I had to look it up. At 55F we would need about 10,500 atmospheres of pressure to achieve my mythical “skim-ice” on FL lakes.

 

[redhat]

I remote start and let it idle. Sometimes I do it twice.

 

[iCurious]

2 - 5 minutes dependent on the weather.

 

[GW.]

I always know when my neighbor leaves for work. -20f, no warm up, piston slap and transmission whine for a 1/2 mile until he’s out of ear shot. Then asks me why my vehicle doesn’t sound like that at the next get together…

 

[kschachn]

Sometimes in -20C or less with the old Neon, I would take off ASAP and drag the brakes for a while to get it warmed up faster! The simple, proven, modern-ish engines are pretty tough, my cars have all gone to the scrap yard or field car duty with the engine running very well...

Rather than load you want to keep the RPM higher.

 

[goblin]

Timed it this morning, with external temp 30F and coolant at 35F at engine start, five minutes over 2 miles with one moderate up slope, one steep downhill with engine braking and three red lights got me to 172F coolant. Engine oil not too far behind, possibly 145ish.
HVAC set to 72F as was left from previous trip.

 

[Patman]

Rather than load you want to keep the RPM higher.

Exactly! When I take the Corvette out for a drive on a cold winter day (clean roads only!) I will have it a gear or two lower than normal in order to warm the engine up faster and to ultimately get the oil to a hotter temperature. So instead of it being at 1200 rpm at 70 mph in 8th gear I’ll keep it in 6th gear and then it’s at 2200 rpm. If I keep the rpm at a lower level on a cold winter day then the oil temperature doesn’t get much above 170 even after being on the highway for an hour. But if I’m holding it closer to 2000 rpm then it brings it up more in the 190-200F range.

 

[OM617YOTA]

If I idle my Land Cruiser for even three minutes, it really speeds warmup once I get driving. Maybe cuts warmup time in half. Especially if I turn on high idle. Old school IDI diesel with aluminum head, those prechambers are dumping a lot of heat into the cooling system.

My cast iron head big block Chevy can idle for 20 minutes or drive 4 miles and still not be up to operating temp. New thermostat and I've checked with a thermal camera, all the heat is staying where it should until the thermostat opens. It's just a big ole lump of iron and sucks up a lot of BTUs.