Leaving the car to warm up..

I was under the impression that I should let my car warm up before driving it and as such I always give it 5 mins in the morning. But I've since heard you should drive it straight away and let it warm up with slow driving?

Anyone know?

 

Mine normally runs only for a minute or so while i sort myself out and then careful driving for a bit.

I also let it run for 10/15 sec before switching it off too.

 

i prefer it to warm up asap, so i redline it off the driveway

i just get in a drive. unless its -20* or so your oil is going to circulate nicely, the sooner you start driving the sooner youll get heat into it IMO.

just be light on throttle inputs so as not to load the engine too much when cold, innit

 

i do let mine warm up for a minite or so then carfully drive it for a good five mins, then after a 15 mile journey to work i would let it cool for 2 mins seen as its a Turbo Diesal,

 

I always drive straight away keeping the revs below 3000. I found on my motorbike I don't need to use the choke if I do this. And bikes are a bugger to start and warm up.

 

you let it idle for 2 mins after a normal 15 mile drive to work?

 

I think the theory is that at idle it takes too long to warm up so is not as good as steady revs 2500ish.....but in all honesty i can't see it causing that much wear anyway. Redlining it cold is obviously not smart.

 

and




in that order

 

i try to warm it up,but sometimes i just get in it and go 4 it!and forget...

 

It's generally accepted that you shouldn't warm it up. This is because (normally) engine wear only ocours when cold, so warm it up a.s.a.p. for minimum wear. I let my mk3 warm up for 1 min tho, as the BE's knock under load in the first minute.

 

how on earth do you cool it????

letting the car idle after driving it for 15 miles will infact warm it up, due to there being no cold air coming in to cool the rad, leaving the car running for two minutes will just heat it up

correct me if im wrong

jaz

 

i also read somewhere that by leaving the car to warm up, can damage turbo internals. This is due to there being less oil in the turbo on start up, and the oil is only throughly distributed at higher revs.

after reading this, i realised that a turbo only starts to spin at certain revs, so how can it be true?

cheers

jaz

 

the idea is that if youve been hammered the life out of a turbo engined car, as you know, the turbo gets uber hot (weve all seen them glow)

the idea is, you let the car idle for a while so that 'cooler' oil gets a chance to circulate over the bearings in the turbo to cool them off. if the engine is switched off when the turbo is red hot, the oil left on the bearing gets litterally cooked and blocks stuff up

a diesel gets no where near hot enough to do that, esp not on a normal run into work and 2 minutes is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaY over kill, a complete waste of time

gotta remember that most of our cars were design for 'lowest common denominator drivers' who have no idea and dont care anyway.

i suppose it matters more later in the engine's life tho

 

the turbo is always spinning when the engine is you loon, it's not Knightrider you know

 

this thread helps if you have a TURBO!

 

TRUE

FALSE Unless it's a water cooled Turbo with an electric run-on cooling system.

 

so on a normal 15 mile drive into work, most likely in rush hour, you imagine a diesel engine would get close to red hot?

 

It has nothing to do with the engine temperature, more to do with engine load.

 

i leave mine approx 30s on starting, to make sure there is oil where it should be, then 1 min or so on shutting down, longer if i've been pressing on

 

Very oddly, my quite highish performance Astra (150bhp, 235lbs/ft, 0-60 in 8.5s) has NO temp gauge at all! It's got plenty of other "performance" bits - big alloys, fat tyres, big brakes, is lowered, etc but NO TEMP GAUGE!!

So I have to guess but because I don't really give a toss about it, it gets a sounds thrashing most of the time.

That'll teach it to sound like a whistly tractor.