[325high]

I spent some time on past threads and on google and i haven't found anything beyond forum conjecture regarding whether or not warming your car up in the winter is bad for the engine. Anyone ever come across a reputable source's opinion? It'd be nice to see something from Popular Mechanics or something.

Why doesn't Mythbusters work on things like this? instead they seem to make up myths just so they can bust them!

[bbbradley]

Engine wear aside, it will waste fuel and add pollutants into the air.

Start the car, fasten your seat belt, get your music going and drive gently for the first few miles until the temp gauge show the engine is warmed.

[Slalom]

bbbradley has my vote on this question. the 5W oils that we use today used to be considered to be a winter weight. Since most drivers did not adjust oil for the temperature, having time for the engine to heat up the oil before driving might have been a good idea. Today it is just a waste of gas.

[PiZauL]

Originally Posted by bbbradley

Engine wear aside, it will waste fuel and add pollutants into the air.

Start the car, fasten your seat belt, get your music going and drive gently for the first few miles until the temp gauge show the engine is warmed.

Wish my car had a temp gauge, LOL.

[335beeeemer]

I usually wait for my second tailpipe to open before I go. I hear that tell tale rattle them we go.

[Kevin Harney]

If it has any bearing on your actions the good old manual says .... start... go ... dont not warm up ....but driving gently until warm is probably a very good idea.

[DASHOCKER]

Originally Posted by 335beeeemer

I usually wait for my second tailpipe to open before I go. I hear that tell tale rattle them we go.

Same here..

[bimmercontrol]

Originally Posted by 335beeeemer

I usually wait for my second tailpipe to open before I go. I hear that tell tale rattle them we go.

glad you brought that up as i would do the same but i unplugged the relay so now both my pipes are always open.

now that its winter and near freezing im wondering if i should plug it back in to allow the cats to warm up, dont know if it would help much if not. the car is garaged at all times.

[BenTrovato]

If everyone in the United States idled their car for 3 minutes every morning, at the end of the year, it would represent less than 0.000001% of the total pollutants that industrial factories put into the atmosphere.

I'm not going to sit here and advocate for people to go ahead and do that, but to think your "saving" the environment by not doing that is delusional

[B-737]

our cars arent jets... but they are still machines.
at work, we warm up the engines for 5 minutes from cold start before applying 80-105% power for take off... this is a hard limitation that we MUST follow, no exceptions. If its not cold soaked, then the warm up is cut to 2 minutes.

i cannot see how allowing the idle to stabilize and come down to 800rpm over a span of 2-3min could possibly hurt our cars. i can think of ways it might hurt the engine by driving it from cold soaked state.

my explorer has a 5.0l V8, since it was new, ive always allowed it to warm up for extensive amounts of time in the winter depending on temps. to the tune of 5-15 minutes. The truck has 200,000 miles on it, and has not had any significant issues with the engine...

based on this, i disagree with 'start, buckle seat belt, and drive gently'...

just sayin'....

[2kaccordocoupe]

I just wait until my revs settle down, takes a min or two at max. Then drive off.

[WingZeroX5]

Originally Posted by B-737

our cars arent jets... but they are still machines.
at work, we warm up the engines for 5 minutes from cold start before applying 80-105% power for take off... this is a hard limitation that we MUST follow, no expectations. If its not cold soaked, then the warm up is cut to 2 minutes.

i cannot see how allowing the idle to stabilize and come down to 800rpm over a span of 2-3min could possibly hurt our cars. i can think of ways it might hurt the engine by driving it from cold soaked state.

my explorer has a 5.0l V8, since it was new, ive always allowed it to warm up for extensive amounts of time in the winter depending on temps. to the tune of 5-15 minutes. The truck has 200,000 miles on it, and has not had any significant issues with the engine...

based on this, i disagree with 'start, buckle seat belt, and drive gently'...

just sayin'....

Me too, I would rather let my car sit idle for a few mins while I go back into the house, grab my coffee and things, kiss my fiancee, and head back into the car. By that time, the cabin will be warm enough, RPM's will be about 800. Driving the car from a dead cold start doesn't feel right...the transmission shifts at a much higher RPM and there's always some weird noises. Once it's warm though, it all goes away and everything smooths out.

For those who care about the amount of emissions going into the atmosphere, you can save just as much by driving conservatively for a little bit than idling.

[ekis18]

Originally Posted by 335beeeemer

I usually wait for my second tailpipe to open before I go. I hear that tell tale rattle them we go.

^ This! and then take off keeping revs below 2500 'till oil is around 200F...by 240F Im ready to

[2kaccordocoupe]

Originally Posted by ekis18

^ This! and then take off keeping revs below 2500 'till oil is around 200F...by 240F Im ready to

My tranny is also pretty clunky until it warms up to this temp.

[bbbradley]

Originally Posted by BenTrovato

If everyone in the United States idled their car for 3 minutes every morning, at the end of the year, it would represent less than 0.000001% of the total pollutants that industrial factories put into the atmosphere.

I'm not going to sit here and advocate for people to go ahead and do that, but to think your "saving" the environment by not doing that is delusional

Do you have a source for that number?

Regardless of the impact, there is an impact, and if you can reduce it and eliminate something that has no benefit, what is the harm?

Start the car, drive gently for a couple miles and off you go.

[galahad05]

Originally Posted by ekis18

^ This! and then take off keeping revs below 2500 'till oil is around 200F...by 240F Im ready to

You know, for me this is 10 miles into my 18 mile commute.
And it would mean that I get passed by everyone but soccer moms on the highway....

[tony20009]

Originally Posted by BenTrovato

If everyone in the United States idled their car for 3 minutes every morning, at the end of the year, it would represent less than 0.000001% of the total pollutants that industrial factories put into the atmosphere.

I'm not going to sit here and advocate for people to go ahead and do that, but to think your "saving" the environment by not doing that is delusional

I agree with Ben.

There is no doubt that the things we do as individuals contribute to environmental pollution. Individuals doing their day-to-day "thing" -- aside from actually driving -- hardly, however, come close to emitting the industrial volumes of pollutants into the atmosphere. What matters, as goes individuals, is the quantity of persons doing this or that thing. Accordingly, things that will make a dent in the pollution caused by individuals are things that do so en masse, for example, using public transportation or bicycles or walking to work, as well as using efficient appliances and whatnot.

[Maestro]

I personally do not believe that any company has done any sort of testing on various wear condition of starting and going verse warming up and going. It would take too long and too many variable to draw an exact conclusion. However, you can use engineering reasoning and decide for yourself.

Any wear your car sees is a function of the oil, and some regard the temperature of the parts. The colder the parts the smaller they get, with that knowledge you can easily conclude that at cold temps moving parts will be in contact with each other more or tighter contact. However, engineers are smarter these days and they factor in the shrinkage of materials at low temps so that you do not have too much wear on them.

With today's better oils especially the synthetics, the parts are lubed immediately when the car is started, unlike how it use to be where oil thicken up and stayed in the pan until the car warmed up, therefore, when starting in cold temperatures you got very little oil to the moving parts which increased wear. Wear is also a function of RPMs so the belief was let it warm up first before you jumped on the accelerator. The other factor in wear is heat, the hotter the parts get the more wear will occur, so you have to worry about getting parts hot without the proper lube getting to them. So you might warm up the top part of the engine however, the lube is still thick in the pan and not get to the hot parts.

The issue today as someone pointed out is that fact you waste fuel. It is a balancing act, wear and tear over wasting fuel which one cost you more long term.

However, I think most people let it warn up so they do not have to drive in a cold car. I found within a mile of my house the BMW is blowing warm air on cold days so it does not take long to get up to temperature.

My usually practice it to start it let it run for a minute before pulling out and take it easy until the car is warm, the car is running it most efficient when it is warm so you do not want to beat on until then.

Here is something to think about, modern F1 cars have tolerance on the motors which are so tight that they need to preheat the engines prior to trying to start them. The engines will not turn over if the engine is not at a particular temperature, which I believe is about 80F.

Because of this the simple fact of starting the engine when cold will create the most wear and tear on the engine, once it is running and oil is flowing you are now beyond the point of metal to metal interaction. so letting is warm up 5 or 10 minutes is not buying you anything except a nice warm car.

Unless you are prepared to heat your engine in the winter and possible keep oil circulating there is nothing you can do to reduce cold weather start up wear and tear.

I can tell you in PA it is illegal to let your car idle unattended, so you can be fined for letting your car idle in the driveway if the police would like to bother. In recent years they been nailing people of do the quick stop at a store and leaving the car running in the winter so they are cracking down.

[TheRox]

Originally Posted by Maestro

I personally do not believe that any company has done any sort of testing on various wear condition of starting and going verse warming up and going. It would take too long and too many variable to draw an exact conclusion. However, you can use engineering reasoning and decide for yourself.

Any wear your car sees is a function of the oil, and some regard the temperature of the parts. The colder the parts the smaller they get, with that knowledge you can easily conclude that at cold temps moving parts will be in contact with each other more or tighter contact. However, engineers are smarter these days and they factor in the shrinkage of materials at low temps so that you do not have too much wear on them.

With today's better oils especially the synthetics, the parts are lubed immediately when the car is started, unlike how it use to be where oil thicken up and stayed in the pan until the car warmed up so when starting in cool you got very little oil to the moving parts so that increase wear. Wear is also a function of RPMs so the belief was let it warm up first before you jumped on the accelerator.

The issue today as someone pointed out is that fact you waste fuel. It is a balancing act, wear and tear over wasting fuel which one cost you more long term.

However, I think most people let it warn up so that do not have to drive in a cold car. I found that the with in a mile of my house the BMW is blowing warm air on cold days so it does not take long to get up to temperature.

My usually practice it to start it let it run for a minute before pulling out and take it easy until the car is warm, the car is running it most efficient when it warm.

Here is something to think about, modern F1 cars have tolerance on the motors which are so tight that they need to preheat the engines prior to trying to start them. The engines will not turn over if the engine is not at a particular temperature, which I believe is about 80F.

Because of this the simple fact of starting the engine when cold will create the most wear and tear on the engine, once it is running and oil is flowing you are now beyond the point of metal to metal interaction. so letting is warm up 5 or 10 minutes is not buying you anything except a nice warm car.

Unless you are prepared to heat your engine in the winter and possible keep oil circulating there is nothing you can do to reduce cold weather starts wear and tear.

I can tell you in PA it is illegal to let your car idle unattended, so you can be fined for letting your car idle in the driveway if the police would like to bother. In recent years they been nailing people of do the quick stop at store and leave the car running in the winter so they are cracking down.

economy must be really bad

[Me_Hi]

Originally Posted by PiZauL

Wish my car had a temp gauge, LOL.

It has but you have to look for it in the hidden menus.

[jbake]

My car stays in my garage and probably the coldest it gets is about 40 in there. 30 second warm up and I'm good to go. But I always drive gingerly for the first five minutes or so.

I think the general rule warming up or not is:

No hard boost until the engine has reached operating temps.

[nuM nuMs]

Does no one read the manuals to their cars?! On page 57 of the 3 series manual its specifically tells you to NOT wait for the engine to warm up while stationary and to start driving right away at moderate speeds.