How important is it to first warm up the car? winter

What are you, some kind of a prick that you tear up your engine to prove it can be started when it's cold? That's a silly thing to do to a vehicle that costs as much as cars do these days!

I didn't say the engine would not start, I just said it isn't a very smart thing to do. If it's in good condition, it probably will start a -30F or even -35F with no heat. Do you think that means it's reasonable thing to do?

You may indeed be a dumbass, especially if you think that isn't causing unnecessary wear and tear on the engine.

I'm sure that you have a great deal of experience with no jacket on at 0 degrees (you lying twit!), but people who live where it actually is cold on a regular basis do have experience and an understanding of what makes a difference. BTW, last time I looked it was -38F here... with a windchill of -58F. Have a look at

-- Floyd L. Davidson Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) snipped-for-privacy@barrow.com

get an auto-starter so you can start the car without the ignition key. Police write a ticket ?#@

Give me some proof that starting my car when it is below zero will harm it. Facts, stats, something other than what you think. But until then, I will be starting my car when it is below zero, and letting it warm up for five minutes, then driving away. I've been doin it that way on all my vehicles, and never had a problem.

my 2 cents!!! I used to drive over 100 km (60 miles) per trip to go to work for over 4 years. I have had many GMs' and Japanese cars. They're always started every year following regular oil change interval. I never had my car run more than a few minutes since I did not want to waste more time in the morning and beside it cold in the butt while waiting for engine to warm-up does not make any sense to me, typically the time it took me to place my coffee in cup holder and seat belt on is all its need. So far, I have not had any engine failure prematurely because of the cold weather. In fact, I never had engine failure and all of my cars when I get rid of it has more than 100,000 miles. Like most people here already said, drive slow when it is cold for a few blocks then drive like normal. My wife on the other hand like to keep her car nice and warm. She usually has the car running for about 20 minutes (remote starter!) then drive to work. Her GM car is still running like top. No oil leak, no burning oil passed E-test. Just waste gas!! So really I don't see any problem either way from engine point of view. Perhaps BMW or other fancy car is more particularly about long idling (morning start-up) due to engine control algorithm for fuel burning to avoid damage to exhaust system or sensors (heard from someone who has a BMW told me..!!)

"Mistercmk" wrote

He can't, but since he lives in Alaska, he figures he's the resident expert of "cold starting" cars.

Ian

All very fine... except you are talking about a warm-up after the engine is started, and I'm talking about a need to pre-heat the engine.

I know of no reason to wait more than something between a few seconds and a few minutes before driving after the engine is started. A few seconds when the temperature is above perhaps

20F, and on up to several minutes at -70F.

The whole point is to wait until fluids have a chance to move. Oil being the prime concern, but power steering fluid and more so transmission fluids are also a concern. Perhaps the best thing in really cold weather (say -40 or colder) is to start the engine and put the transmission into neutral. Let it run for 2,

3, 4 minutes? 10? Depends on the vehicle I guess. If you try longer times and get better response, then use longer times. I you can't tell any difference, just wait a couple minutes and go. (I've seen trucks that at -60F simply would not back out of a parking place until the tranny was given a little time to work.)

Well, selling the car before the engine has much time on it is certainly one way to avoid premature engine wear failures!

What you've just said is that none of your observations could be conclusive.

-- Floyd L. Davidson Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) snipped-for-privacy@barrow.com

Well, lets see... you get how many cold starts per year? 10? 30? 60?

There are roughly 60 days a year when it is not below freezing here. That's probably 300 days a year for cold starts, which means anyone living here probably gets 5 to 10 times the experience that you do.

Ten years here is like a life time there.

-- Floyd L. Davidson Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) snipped-for-privacy@barrow.com

Go to google, and use the advanced web search features. Search on

"cold start" wear pre-heat

Include the quotes because you want that one as a phrase. You'll find *many* references to the wear caused by cold starts. You will not find a single one that says pre-heating is not useful in reducing wear. Not a single one!

Here are some examples, from a variety of sources,

A Canadian magazine:

"Vehicles subjected to Canada's cold winter starts experience more engine wear in a couple years than a California vehicle may in a couple decades of starts."

A commercial site:

"preserve the life of their engines by avoiding cold starts which can be directly attributable to up to 80% of engine wear."

A government site, primarily concerned with non-wear affects:

"Plugging in for 2 to 4 hours when the temperature is 20 F above zero or colder drastically reduces emissions. Cold engines produce 50 to 100 times more carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon, and nitrous oxides emissions in the first minute of operation than pre-warmed ones. Over 90,000 cars and trucks are registered in Missoula.  Plugging in a car in can reduce carbon monoxide by almost a pound per cold start.  If we all plugged in, we could greatly reduce carbon monoxide pollution in our area.

A techie outfit (the whole article is very interesting):

"We believe there are two major causes of wear in a properly filtered engine: cold starts and bore rust.

STAHL HEADERS/CAMS 1513/1515 Mt. Rose Ave. York, PA 17403 June 1988 STAHL HEADERS/CAMS NEWSLETTER

While you are looking at what the google search comes up with, don't avoid the ones that reference aircraft engines... They get a bit more adamant out it proceedures because the effects of engine failure are legally more of a liability for them than for Ford or Subaru!

-- Floyd L. Davidson Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) snipped-for-privacy@barrow.com

Floyd, please remind me not to challenge you to provide proofs. Sheer genius.

What if you can not plug your car in while you at work? At extreme cold night, I will plug in the car (block heater is all I have) but only for 4 hrs using prog. timers. Never plug-in the car at work simply because I could not anyway. I think plug in is better but has little or nothing to do with engine damage (internal engine we are talking about). The cold weather does not help only if the engine is not properly maintained then you could probable damage the engine. I believe use proper oil type for the climate should be sufficient. To damage an engine, you need heat and heat is what you are lacking off in extreme cold weather. I can see alternator, starter motor, engine hoses leaking, seals, battery and mostly rad and external body component properly taking more abuse than actual engine itself. Warming-up your engine before starting or after started only help starter motor and comfort and nothing else. I say replace your engine oil often and use high quality engine oil is your best safe guard against premature or engine damage.

By the way, when I get rid of the car never because engine problem. I never hardly get rid of my car less than 100,000 miles. My current car (1993 model) has about 200,000 miles right now and still running great. My brother Volvo (960) has more than 300,000 miles and all its need was new head gasket and head job (just had it done last years from Volvo) to reduce oil consumption and now it run like top. So lets be sure it is conclusive this time.

1/ Plug-in is better for cold start-up 2/ Plug-in or not from my experience does not make engine wear prematurely (premature engine wear by someone definition is 25,000 miles?). It will help only if you're neglect basic engine oil (use proper oil grade for climate condition) and cooling (proper mixture)maintenance If the engine and engine bay is design properly, it should last more than 100,000 miles. 3/ I agree cold weather is hard on vehicle (all external component which you can not do anything about) and still has nothing to do with engine damage right? 4/ The key point as everyone has already said is drive slow till you warm-up other component (transmission, and other moving parts) to reduce engine loading. If you respect all this, your engine should last more than 25,000 miles and expect more than 100,000 miles with proper engine (engine that last without cold weather)

Perhaps you have seen many engines damage due to lack of engine warm-up and that is totally true, from my experience I have never seen it yet. That means it is not a systematic problem and consider a random problem which we can not avoid it by engine warm-up

It has been fun to chat about this and it is rather > >my 2 cents!!!

I have read, with great interest, this message chain. With so many diverse opinions, I am not surprised by the need to ask the original question!!!

In sumation, it appears that the answer depends on where you live and the temperatures observed, and the level of wear and tear your willing to put up with!

If one wishes to pre-heat the car, that's fine, but in cold areas where the roads are salted, the body will rust out before the engine fails. The cold can affect other systems that may fail prematurely.

If one wishes to keep a particular car for the next, say, 50 years. One can pre-heat, use a pre-oil circulator (a pump to oil the motor before cranking), drive as if there is an egg under the accelerator, use Amsoil or whatever, etc., etc., etc., This would give you a car with 1,000,000 miles or more!

FWIW: I idle the car for as long as it takes to scrape the ice off the windshield, then drive away!

That just is not true.

When you start the engine the amount of wear on every internal moving part is increased at lower temperatures. That is true for any temperature below normal operating temperature, and for any kind of oil. However, the amount of wear is insignificant until the temperature drops well below normal operating temperature, and is not really worth concern until it is perhaps

10 or 20 degrees below freezing. It is also true that different types of oil have different effects. Clearly synthetic oil is better than non-synthetic oil for cold starts, and the colder the starts, the more benefit from the synthetic oil.

But at the extremes for whatever type of oil you use, it just is not smart to start a cold engine. Somewhere between +20F and -20F almost every non-synthetic oil becomes jelly-like in consistency. But even synthetic oil does not flow well at -50F. In either case, if the oil has not been pre-heated, and the engine parts are cold, there is no lubrication until several minutes after the engine is started. That *does* cause greatly increase engine wear.

Generally that is probably true. Power steering hoses tend to burst from cold starts, but most everything else works well enough with the exception of belts. In places like Fairbanks Alaska where it is often -30F to -50F, the first cold snap of the year is always cause for a lot of "highway snakes" being seen. Every old fan belt breaks the first day. And of course a cold day is the *wrong* day to replace belts. A brand new, stiff, belt is almost as likely to break as an old worn out belt!

Pre-heat your engine if it is colder than 10F, and use synthetic oil.

How much cold starting do you do?

25,000 miles???? That's ridiculous.

That isn't true.

Why should it fail that soon? (Cold starting!)

There is no reason an engine should only last 100,000 miles. If fails that soon, or anywhere near it, it has been abused.

It is indeed interesting. It's also difficult, because everyone has a different idea of what is "cold", what is "premature wear", and what is "the right oil".

-- Floyd L. Davidson Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) snipped-for-privacy@barrow.com

Thank you!

(That was an easy one though. There's a lot more available than what I showed.)

-- Floyd L. Davidson Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) snipped-for-privacy@barrow.com

From what I understand, theft prevention. Even if you lock the car doors, they will still levy the fine

What is off that if cars emit 50-100 time more pollutants when cold, one would think that the air quality alerts we have so often in the summer time would actually happen more in the winter. Hmmm...

Depends on local conditions more than anything else. Fairbanks sits in huge valley, with the Alaska Range to the south and the Brooks Range to the north, and sometimes the air just doesn't move for weeks. (Which is why it can get 80 below in some parts of that valley in the winter, and also be 100 above in the summer.)

They get temperature inversions in the winter, with cold air settling to the low areas and warm air rising above it.

And the EPA has been after them for 20 years because of the dozen or so pollution alerts a year that they sometimes have. Most of it is produced by car engines. They've done all kinds of studies on how to reduce air pollution, and one of the big ones is pre-heating cars before starting, even at 20 to 30 degrees above zero. Another is getting an annual tuneup (which is most effective for older cars).

In that particular location, air pollution is a winter only event.

The advice to plug in even at such warm temperatures ran into a serious conflict with the local military bases 15 years or so ago, as they were trying to reduce costs and decided one way to do was cut the power to all of the parking lot plug-ins any time the temp got up to about 10 degrees (if I remember right).

They eventually compromised and raised it a bit.

-- Floyd L. Davidson Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) snipped-for-privacy@barrow.com

I used to live in a part of Canada where every January we would see some nights -45 F and a lot of nights -25f to -40f. This was in '64. There was no such thing as Synthetic for the average motorist. We used 5w30 if we had a new engine or 10w 30 if it was a bit "Dodgy." If you lived in an apartment you didn't get a line for a block heater. We would warm the engine while we scraped the windshield, then drive "carefully" to the Highway when we would drive at the normal limit(60mph.) It was not unusual to get 150,000-200,000 miles from a small V8. Cars are for using! Buy 'em, drive 'em, maintain 'em and get rid of 'em. It's really not worth getting anal about a lump of metal. :-)) (Just my sense of humour)