Warming up engine is useless and waste gas

Status
Not open for further replies.
Originally Posted By: Garak
Originally Posted By: Brit33
quite a thick frost in the morning here. Try driving off with this all around your windows.

We do get blisteringly cold, but that's a lot of frost. In -40, that thickness of frost isn't that common.

I don't blame you in the least. Some people, myself included, have put blankets or special covers over the windows, too. I used to do that often on the F-150 when it would be plugged in and have the interior warmer going. With a carb, it still needed warmup time, so I bothered with the cover less and less.


I think it's our climate. Not very cold but it tends to warm up during the day and then all condense and freeze everynight.
If it was dry cold all the time we'd have less of an issue.

Anyway with this cold I always let the engine at least settle down until the temp sensors react and lower the rpm. First min or 2 then ecu boosts the rpm with the rich AFR and secondary air pump.
Once I know the oil is pumping all around then I drive off (if the ice has cleared!)
 
Originally Posted By: KitaCam
Originally Posted By: rshaw125
I'm not concerned about the engine but I am concerned about seeing where I'm going. Monday it took almost 20 minutes to warm the car and scrap the windows of ice.


Spray window with 3:1 mix of water:rubbing alcohol and you won't have to wait 20min.


Does rubbing alcohol harm the clear coat or paint at all? I've always been afraid to do something like this and get over spray on the pain and eventually have areas around my windows that look like [censored].
 
Originally Posted By: ccap41
Originally Posted By: KitaCam
Originally Posted By: rshaw125
I'm not concerned about the engine but I am concerned about seeing where I'm going. Monday it took almost 20 minutes to warm the car and scrap the windows of ice.


Spray window with 3:1 mix of water:rubbing alcohol and you won't have to wait 20min.


Does rubbing alcohol harm the clear coat or paint at all? I've always been afraid to do something like this and get over spray on the pain and eventually have areas around my windows that look like [censored].


No. Most all windshield washer fluid contains alcohol and it gets all over everything.

Rubbing alcohol is great for getting sap off the paint.
 
We don't get alcohol in our washer fluid down here...going to try some this winter coming.

I'm not telling anyone how to use their money, just trying to dispell myths.

You want a toasty warm car when you get in, or the AC having cooled it, have at it...not my issue or concern, just don't say it's the "best" for your engine.

40 or 50 days of the year I have to scrape ice of my commuter, and while I'm doing so, the engine is always running, getting that extra degree or so into the coolant...Nissan has a "warm" button that bumps the idle up to 1,600RPM, as the turbodiesel won't warm at plain idle.
 
Originally Posted By: Shannow
We don't get alcohol in our washer fluid down here...going to try some this winter coming.

I'm not telling anyone how to use their money, just trying to dispell myths.

You want a toasty warm car when you get in, or the AC having cooled it, have at it...not my issue or concern, just don't say it's the "best" for your engine.

40 or 50 days of the year I have to scrape ice of my commuter, and while I'm doing so, the engine is always running, getting that extra degree or so into the coolant...Nissan has a "warm" button that bumps the idle up to 1,600RPM, as the turbodiesel won't warm at plain idle.


I apologize in advance for bringing up my truck in this forum but my world revolves around it. In my owners manual, it states "a loaded truck shall not be moved until the coolant temp reaches 130*F". I do oblige mostly, although if possible I try to ease my way toward the road in the lower gears using 800-1000 rpm to minimize idle time while putting very little load on the engine.

Volvo has a "warm hold" feature for both maintaining heat at idle and warming a cold engine. It somehow uses the engine brake (after a couple minutes idle) to put a load on the engine and spools up the turbo. It depends on just how cold it is on the amount of boost it makes but in something like -20f or colder I've seen as much as 8-10 psi during extended idling. It keeps the oil and coolant nice and warm even with a howling wind trying to steal my heat away.
 
Originally Posted By: Jetronic
Originally Posted By: gathermewool


Interesting. I wonder what the logic for waiting 30 seconds on a warm day is. At that point, everything that needs to be lubed, will have been lubed for 29.9 seconds.


KISS

simplicity is key if you want buyers to follow your advice. 30 seconds is easy to remember, a time/temperature table isn't.


You're probably right. The engineers submitted their proposal and the bean counters went with the most conservative number for all cases.
 
Originally Posted By: Miller88
All of my vehicles will turn on the check engine light, battery light, oil pressure light for 3 seconds before I start them up ...

I think it's a "Hey the key is on but I'm not making any volts" "Hey the key is on I'm not making any oil pressure"


I don't think it's communicating anything; the lights cycle to perform an indicator check. If you don't see the indicator light up, then it's not working and won't indicate its respective problem/condition, and should be looked into.
 
Originally Posted By: stower17

2) The only owners manual I have seen that recommended warming up the engine was in my friends 1999 Land Rover Discovery II. That engine was a total piece of junk from cracked piston skirts to cylinder head problems. Coincidence? IDK, those engines were sure junk though.


Sounds like someone had the Rover (really Buick) V8. By the time 1999 rolled around, they'd been building that engine with the same equipment for nearly 25-30yrs.

Engine displacement increases, combined with thinner cylinders walls, ageing equipment that wasn't meeting tolerances as it ought to have (Financial problems at Rover?) and finally the higher temperatures of EFI were all factors of the head problems.

What caused the head problems was the cylinder liners weren't pressed in all that well (old equipment), and the higher temperatures induced from EFI would cause the piston to expand faster than the block, and thus the piston would start shifting the cylinder liner, it would then slip and take out the HG just as in the Rover KV6 produced *particularly* by Kia in Korea (50% failure rate initially).

The other problem was the poorly-seated liners having compression gases escape into them, putting pressure on the block and rusting the engine from behind the liners into the coolant passages. This (apparently) revealed issues with the actual casting of the blocks - poor quality metal found its way in and could wreak havoc...

The somewhat expensive "top hat" liners mod basically solves all these issues, provided the block is salvageable. Rover produced "three tiers" of block, based on the cylinder wall thickness, which would then produce the different sized engines. The final 4.6L engines with Bosch EFI systems being the "most prone" (again, apparently).

Rover's recommendation to warm-up would have been because of the different expansion rates of the pistons and the block/cylinder liners. In essence this acknowledged they had very old technology rehashed over and over that had significant drawbacks.

The Diesel TD5 engine was a far, far better design and was probably one of the best (if not THE best) engine for its time in the 90s.
 
Originally Posted By: Brit33
I think it's our climate. Not very cold but it tends to warm up during the day and then all condense and freeze everynight.

I would agree. We rarely have more than one night like that a winter. If we're really having to clean a car off, it's snow, not a bunch of ice.
 
If you grew up on carburetors and never had to worry about salt rust killing a car before the engine died a natural death, things like taking care of the power train were ingrained.

If I lived on the Right Coast, or in the middle east (between Mississippi and the Allegheny Mountains vs the mid-west between the Rockies and the mighty Miss...), I'd just drive off too. The car will rust away before the motor dies. But not out here. Same car, 3rd engine is not unheard of at 0.5M miles (carb'd)
laugh.gif
 
Last edited:
Very interesting about the land rover engines. I did read many years back that the machines and dyes used to build and construct those engines were worn out, resulting in engine tolerances not within spec. Makes sense why they recommended warming up that engine. Amazing what $40k bought you back in 1999...

A modern FI engine that doesnt have any build quality issues really doesnt need to be warmed up. Id still check the owners manual of any new to me car and make sure there arent any special notations.
 
Originally Posted By: Garak
Agreed, the "good old days," right? Fuel dilution, finnicky carbs, points....


Pump exactly 3.5 times, play with the choke. Crank it for 5 minutes and maybe it will run on 1 or 2 cylinders. Or until the battery dies.

Once it is running, you get out and go back in side. 10 minutes later it's idling at 3000RPM

Originally Posted By: Stewie
Carburators absolutely need warm up


I think that is why my parents let their vehicles run for 20-30 minutes in the morning. My mom "warms up" her car for longer than her drive to work!
 
Originally Posted By: Stewie
Carburators absolutely need warm up


No they don't. I don't even warm up my snowblower. Fire it up, with throttle at idle and choke half on, get it moving. Run at low RPM until it gets a bit of heat, then put the full load on.
If everything is as it should be, no need to warm up carbed engines.
 
Originally Posted By: 4wheeldog
Originally Posted By: Stewie
Carburators absolutely need warm up


No they don't. I don't even warm up my snowblower. Fire it up, with throttle at idle and choke half on, get it moving. Run at low RPM until it gets a bit of heat, then put the full load on.
If everything is as it should be, no need to warm up carbed engines.


In a weather of -30C, you probably do.
 
So piston aircraft engines require rebuilds during the service life of the aircraft in which they're installed?
Fair enough.
OTOH, you can open the throttle fully on most NA aircraft engines and leave it there as long as you'd like.
Granted, the typical NA air-cooled aircraft piston engine only makes around 30 bhp/liter and granted that power falls off rapidly with altitude.
Still, there aren't too many cars in which full throttle can be run for more than a couple of minutes and you have to wonder how most car engines would do with the high lead content fuel most light aircraft require. There are aircraft/engine combinations for which unleaded car gas is allowed, vapor lock being the bugbear in some aircraft for which only avgas is allowed.
Also, the typical light single has a service life in years and hours well beyond what one sees with a mere car, so of course it goes through more than one engine build through its working life. A fairly cheap, old two place trainer that has less top end speed than most really cheap new cars will also run you more than any of them if it has had decent maintenance and has at least a mid-time engine.
None of which has anything to do with the topic of this thread.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top