Warm Up Your Vehicle In Winter: NO

[John]

Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Warm Up Your Car In The Winter Kiersten Hickman
© Sasha Ivanova

When it's frigid outside and you have to drive to some sort of destination, there's only one solution to fighting the ridiculous cold: Warm up the car. Just start it up a few minutes before hopping in, giving your cabin and your engine time to warm up before hitting the road. Plus, it's supposed to be good for the life of your engine, right?

Wrong! Warming up your car in winter before driving it is actually terrible for your engine. According to Popular Mechanics, driving your car right away is the fastest way to warm up your engine, and will actually prolong the life of your engine instead of letting it sit idly before driving. Answering the old question on whether you should warm up your car.

The reasoning has to do with how modern internal combustion engines work. By letting your car sit to warm up, it's actually putting extra fuel into the combustion chamber, which can get onto your cylinder walls. Because gasoline is an excellent solvent, too much on your cylinder walls can dissolve the oil that lubricates your cylinders, leading to shorter life on crucial components.

Of course, hopping into a cold car is never a fun task. Although driving your car will actually warm up your engine faster than idling, it still means driving for a period of time in a cold vehicle. And, it also means dealing with the frost on your car windows before they warm up. Fortunately, you can easily defrost your windows in 30 seconds with this simple car window defrosting trick.

Now if warming up your car in winter is actually terrible for your engine, why did people even do this in the first place? According to USA Today, this practices comes from the use of cars with carburetors fuel delivery system that preceded fuel injection that did require warming up beforehand. Some people would have to wait up to 10 minutes before even getting into a car, deeming it safe enough to drive with a warmed up engine. Nevertheless, cars and technology have drastically changed since the 1960s, which means this old practice is no longer required.

Instead, just give it a minute and start with an easy drive. Flooring it right away obviously isn't the solution, but easing yourself into a drive will help to warm your engine faster than you originally thought.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/owne...bev?li=BBnb7Kz

[Busa Dave]

Yes this has been this way for many years and still people insist on letting their vehicles "warm" up by idling. I drive diesel pickups and there are still old school people who hang onto the outdated practice.

[brad66]

I let my cars with carburetors warm up for a few minutes so they won't stumble when I pull into traffic. The newer ones with fuel injection are just get in and go.

[Fireeagle]

Been trying to convince my wife to stop doing this for years. She doesn't believe you can hop in and go with fuel injection. She also likes the car toasty when she gets in and even has the heated steering wheel. I get in, put it in gear and go in all of my cars.

[Boomer]

Of course if we're talking about our Corvettes with their "summer only" tires, its unlikely we will be heading out often in freezing wx with a bunch of frost on the windshield.

I'd like to think I can drive my C7 "nearly" year around here in the Mid-Atlantic. After starting when its cold, I'll take 30 seconds or so to wipe the windows and do a walk around before heading out slowly. When its cold, I'll always check the tire temp indicator after start. At times, it will show "cold" if the car has been outside so I'll cruise lightly for a coupla minutes till the tires show "warm" before I hit the main drag.

[meyerweb]

Wrong! Warming up your car in winter before driving it is actually terrible for your engine. According to Popular Mechanics, driving your car right away is the fastest way to warm up your engine,

While this is undeniably true, I'm not sure it's the answer to the right question. While warming up your engine as fast as possible is ideal for emissions and mpg, that's not necessarily the same as best for minimizing wear. I'm not saying it's the wrong answer, just that I haven't seen any factual evidence to indicate whether it's wrong or right. The claim is that the richer mixture in a cold engine washes oil from the cylinder walls, but I've never seen a single article that provides any actual data that proves it. I'm not convinced the mixture ever gets that rich. And even if it does:

The flip side is that driving immediately on a cold engine means you're revving it up to at least 2500 rpm (if you're conservative) while it's cold, as opposed to idling at ~800 rpm. What's worse in terms of wear, warming it up for 5 minutes at 800 rpm, or varying rpm between 800 and 2500 or more during those 5 minutes?

I don't know the answer, but I'm far from convinced that Sasha Ivanova does, either.

[John]

Sasha Ivanova is far from the only one who is saying the warming up your fuel injected motor in winter is the wrong thing to do. Here is just one more article among many respected sources that says exactly as per above.

Warming Up Your Car in the Cold Just Harms the Engine The long-held notion that you should let your car idle in the cold is only true for carbureted engines.

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By Jay Bennett
Nov 29, 2017
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In the thick of winter, the common wisdom is that when you are gearing up to take your truck out in the cold and snow, you should step outside, start up your engine, and let it idle to warm up. But contrary to popular belief, this does not prolong the life of your engine; in fact, it decreases it by stripping oil away from the engine's cylinders and pistons.

In a nutshell, an internal combustion engine works by using pistons to compress a mixture of air and vaporized fuel within a cylinder. The compressed mixture is then ignited to create a combustion event—a little controlled explosion that powers the engine.

When your engine is cold, the gasoline is less likely to evaporate and create the correct ratio of air and vaporized fuel for combustion. Engines with electronic fuel injection have sensors that compensate for the cold by pumping more gasoline into the mixture. The engine continues to run rich in this way until it heats up to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

"That's a problem because you're actually putting extra fuel into the combustion chamber to make it burn and some of it can get onto the cylinder walls," Stephen Ciatti, a mechanical engineer who specializes in combustion engines at the Argonne National Laboratory, told Business Insider. "Gasoline is an outstanding solvent and it can actually wash oil off the walls if you run it in those cold idle conditions for an extended period of time."

The life of components like piston rings and cylinder liners can be significantly reduced by gasoline washing away the lubricating oil, not to mention the extra fuel that is used while the engine runs rich. Driving your car is the fastest way to warm the engine up to 40 degrees so it switches back to a normal fuel to air ratio. Even though warm air generated by the radiator will flow into the cabin after a few minutes, idling does surprisingly little to warm the actual engine. The best thing to do is start the car, take a minute to knock the ice off your windows, and get going.

Of course, hopping into your car and gunning it straightaway will put unnecessary strain on your engine. It takes 5 to 15 minutes for your engine to warm up while driving, so take it nice and easy for the first part of your drive.

Warming up your car before driving is a leftover practice from a time when carbureted engines dominated the roads. Carburetors mix gasoline and air to make vaporized fuel to run an engine, but they don't have sensors that tweak the amount of gasoline when it's cold out. As a result, you do need to let older cars warm up before driving or they will stall out. But it's been about 30 years since carbureted engines were common in cars.

So unless you're rolling in a 1970s Chevelle—which we assume isn't your daily driver—bundle up, get into that cold car, and get it moving.

Source: Business Insider

https://www.popularmechanics.com/car...-harms-engine/

[Boomer]

I'm not saying it's the wrong answer, just that I haven't seen any factual evidence to indicate whether it's wrong or right. The claim is that the richer mixture in a cold engine washes oil from the cylinder walls, but I've never seen a single article that provides any actual data that proves it. I'm not convinced the mixture ever gets that rich.

Yea, just the facts mam. Where's the data? Hopefully Argonne National Labs has some data to support Ciatti's claim beyond theoretical.

Also I would't think it takes "an extended period of time" for the engine to heat up to 40F at idle. In the time it takes for me to wipe the windows and do a walk around, the engine probably gets to 40F.

[Busa Dave]

While this is undeniably true, I'm not sure it's the answer to the right question. While warming up your engine as fast as possible is ideal for emissions and mpg, that's not necessarily the same as best for minimizing wear. I'm not saying it's the wrong answer, just that I haven't seen any factual evidence to indicate whether it's wrong or right. The claim is that the richer mixture in a cold engine washes oil from the cylinder walls, but I've never seen a single article that provides any actual data that proves it. I'm not convinced the mixture ever gets that rich. And even if it does:

The flip side is that driving immediately on a cold engine means you're revving it up to at least 2500 rpm (if you're conservative) while it's cold, as opposed to idling at ~800 rpm. What's worse in terms of wear, warming it up for 5 minutes at 800 rpm, or varying rpm between 800 and 2500 or more during those 5 minutes?

I don't know the answer, but I'm far from convinced that Sasha Ivanova does, either.

Take a look here as well. https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-cul...m-up-your-car/ This practice of idling a modern especially a direct injection engine has been discredited years ago. There is more data out there on this than you want to take the time to read. Studies have been done but gas cars are a no brainer it is the oil burners I watch and the days of warming up a modern diesel are dead and gone as well.

Kind of sad for me I liked starting and letting the big boys just idle for 15 minutes in the old days. On a cold day say 28 with my 2018 6.7 Ford still takes 20 miles to get the oil to normal 194 to 198 under no load. All of my older 12v Cummins would not even get the water to normal going on this same road going to work. The non turbo 7.3 Fords really ran cold!!!

[meyerweb]

Sasha Ivanova is far from the only one who is saying the warming up your fuel injected motor in winter is the wrong thing to do. Here is just one more article among many respected sources that says exactly as per above.



https://www.popularmechanics.com/car...-harms-engine/

Yes, they all say the same thing, as if they're quoting each other. But has anyone actually seen a controlled experiment that actually proves the assertions made in these articles? I haven't. Neither of these quoted articles provides any data to support the assertion.

[John]

Ask yourself this question, why do all of the OEM’s not support long, warmup idle periods for their new cars, the same OEMs who used to recommend considerable idle period for their cars made decades ago.

[meyerweb]

Take a look here as well. https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-cul...m-up-your-car/ !!

Oh, please! Spraying gasoline from a spray bottle is hardly a reasonable analog for what goes on inside a cylinder. This video repeats all the same claims, but also fails to present any actual DATA to support it. Show me a study that actually uses a real engine, in a realistic environment, that demonstrates this.

[meyerweb]

Ask yourself this question, why do all of the OEM’s not support long, warmup idle periods for their new cars, the same OEMs who used to recommend considerable idle period for their cars made decades ago.

That's easy: EPA. Cold engines spew many, many more pollutants than warm engine. The EPA wants cars to warm up faster, and I'm willing to be EPA smog tests follow manufacturer warm up recommendations during testing.

[Boomer]

Ask yourself this question, why do all of the OEM’s not support long, warmup idle periods for their new cars ...

OEMs also equip their cars with remote start capability which provides the ability and encouragement to let cars warm up or cool off before driving.

Why remote start?

"A remote starter is a radio controlled device installed in a vehicle by the factory to preheat or cool the vehicle before the owner gets into it. Once activated, by pushing a button on a special key chain remote, it starts the vehicle automatically for a predetermined time."


OTOH IMO ... "long... idle periods" for any car at any time is dumb; security risk, waste of fuel, pollution, wear and tear, etc.

[JB]

I think its beneficial to not beat the hell out of your car when its cold.

I usually wait until oil temperature is above 150 degrees before running it past 4000 rpms..

thats about the only precaution I take when driving in the winter months.

i never let my car idle to warm up unless the windows are fogged up...

then only becaise i cant see out the windshield if i had parked somewhere for a long time during some winter travels.