Originally Posted By: KrisZ
Originally Posted By: ADFD1
To you guys who say you drive gently until the engine warms up completely what do you mean? When I lived in NY a typical drive to work was about 10 miles on the highway, with a 3-5 minute drive to the highway. I'd start the engine run it till it hit about 1000 rpm, usually about 1 minute. It would get to 0*F to 20*F during the dead of winter. I would drive slowly to the highway, and depending on how things were I would sometimes have to hit 3500 rpms or higher to merge to get onto the highway, that was unavoidable. How you guys are able to stay at or below 2000 rpms for the 20-30 minutes it takes the oil to really reach operating temps is puzzling.
If you mean operating temp as when the temp gauge says normal then that it another story.
3500 RPM when the coolant temp. is in normal is not going to harm anything. If you want to do WOT and redline runs, then you should wait until the oil is at full operating temp.
For me, I try to stay below 2500 RPM when the engine is dead cold (it's a 4 cylinder so 2000 RPM would be too slow), but once the coolant temp is in normal range, 3500 to 4000 RPM is not a problem, although in my commute 3.5K RPM is enough, but I still avoid WOT runs or hard downshifts.
Thanks, how bad is red lining an engine after about 10 minutes on the highway in 20*f temps? I eat lunch with a bunch of motor heads and these guys are clueless. These newer engines warm up pretty fast compared to the cast iron engines from 20 years ago.
