It was around freezing at home again this morning and I was trying to baby my car a bit despite being in a hurry due to running about 5 minutes behind schedule...that makes a big difference in my commute due to school buses and the general exponential increase in traffic starting around 7am.
I got down to the "main road" and my car was not warm (the little blue temperature icon on my dash was lit), but it wasn't ice cold, either. I saw lights off in the distance when I was about to turn and thought about waiting for that car to pass, but it was slow moving and those drivers often have long "trains" backed up behind them...I gave it a little gas and merged in politely way before that car got near me (a work truck coming in off the next road down actually ended cutting him off in a rather rude way and then tailgating me).
Anyway, my slight reluctance to get up and go a bit in my car while it was short of being warmed up got me thinking...is there really a problem?
Now, my first car had a carburetor along with an indifferent maintenance plan, and I didn't get up and go in that thing before a decent warm up in cold weather because it might hesitate and even stall. Maybe proper adjustments by somebody in the know would have helped, but carbureted vehicles tended to have problems with starting and running in the cold and it was generally well worth taking it easy on them before they were warm if you didn't want to end up having your engine die just when you pulled out into traffic.
With a properly running fuel injected car that has been running at least half a minute or so, is there really an issue with just standing on it? The MOFT should be awesome given the temperature of the oil...I know that there will be some power loss due to the oil being so thick, but is there really a chance of damaging anything? Is anything going to happen beyond the engine feeling a bit sluggish? I would imagine some will say that it will take quite some time for the cold oil to make it through the whole engine and that it might be too thick to even flow through some channels at first, but I seem to recall reading some posts here that said these were highly exaggerated concerns at best.
And, does the presence of a turbo make any difference in the answers to these questions?
I know what what the long standing common practice is, just wondering if it really makes sense with modern vehicles.
I got down to the "main road" and my car was not warm (the little blue temperature icon on my dash was lit), but it wasn't ice cold, either. I saw lights off in the distance when I was about to turn and thought about waiting for that car to pass, but it was slow moving and those drivers often have long "trains" backed up behind them...I gave it a little gas and merged in politely way before that car got near me (a work truck coming in off the next road down actually ended cutting him off in a rather rude way and then tailgating me).
Anyway, my slight reluctance to get up and go a bit in my car while it was short of being warmed up got me thinking...is there really a problem?
Now, my first car had a carburetor along with an indifferent maintenance plan, and I didn't get up and go in that thing before a decent warm up in cold weather because it might hesitate and even stall. Maybe proper adjustments by somebody in the know would have helped, but carbureted vehicles tended to have problems with starting and running in the cold and it was generally well worth taking it easy on them before they were warm if you didn't want to end up having your engine die just when you pulled out into traffic.
With a properly running fuel injected car that has been running at least half a minute or so, is there really an issue with just standing on it? The MOFT should be awesome given the temperature of the oil...I know that there will be some power loss due to the oil being so thick, but is there really a chance of damaging anything? Is anything going to happen beyond the engine feeling a bit sluggish? I would imagine some will say that it will take quite some time for the cold oil to make it through the whole engine and that it might be too thick to even flow through some channels at first, but I seem to recall reading some posts here that said these were highly exaggerated concerns at best.
And, does the presence of a turbo make any difference in the answers to these questions?
I know what what the long standing common practice is, just wondering if it really makes sense with modern vehicles.