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

That's what I do with my truck, when I need to scrape the windows. Otherwise, I open the door, start the truck before getting in the seat, get settled into the truck, then take off. Planning on putting Mobil 1 in the crankcase when I'm due for my first change on this truck.

Reply to
Mike Levy
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...started up quite nicely in mid of october and will be shut down in march?

Ha ha... Just kidding... :)

But there are some places on Earth where that is only way to keep your car on duty if you don't have a heated garage. In that lands -36C is not a cold snap, it's a thaw. That's true. Believe me.

Reply to
Michael

Theres a lot of articals in google if you search for "cold start" "engine wear" Use the quotations so it searches for those groupings of words.

Heres one that happens to be from a canadian

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qualifications are at the bottom of the site. Opinions are as we all know.... However I see no reason what so ever to slap a car into drive right after its started in the cold or even in the summer. I personaly like to allow fluids to flow a little and allow some thermal expansion to take place before I put a load on anything. I dont like being pushed out of bed and made to run in the cold so why would I do the same to my car? Would you run a race before stretching? Some are saying that it would goto into close loop faster if you ran it. Yeah so it would, however as I see it I would rather replace a cat conv before an engine any day. High performing race engines are allowed to idle before their ran. Especially if they have aluminum connecting rods. Metal gets on the brittle side when its cold so let it build a little heat before you stress it. If you dont like to wait then do like some suggested and keep the rpms down. Thats good, I do that as well. Putting the car in neutral so the trans fluids flow while it idles is a good idea as well. Either way most of us are set in our ways so lets leave it at that.

Reply to
Bon·ne·ville

I spent 20 years living in Salcha, some 40 miles southeast of Fairbanks, and working in Fairbanks. I put 200k+ miles on three different cars.

Which is a wee bit of experience, given I've seen -70F once, and have seen weeks go by when it never got warmer than -40F. (Which isn't bad, as other places in the interior get down to -80F.)

All of that is the reason I live in Barrow today. It's significantly less extreme as far as cold weather goes, and I typically drive about 2 miles a day rather than 80-100. We've got maybe 40-50 miles of road, but I make an effort not to use them!

Around here if you don't plug in your vehicle, you won't get

20,000 miles on it!

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

Reply to
Floyd Davidson

I'm curious, who lives in places where air temperature gets down to

-36C

That's COLD!

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Reply to
junkmail01

Such as at the station in Antacrtica? The planes they send down there never get shut down when there, they leave them running, otherwise the oil will gel, from operating temp, in a matter of minutes. Local ANG is one that does missions down there, and was involved in the rescue of the doc. that had cancer. I actually think it was a plane from our base that picked her up...

Reply to
Mike Levy

Above the snowbelt in Ontario, we get to see that occasionally. Good thing I have a heated garage that keeps the car around -2 to -5 depending on how severe it is outside.

Reply to
Matt Keefer

I used to have an 84 Buick LeSabre, and after that, an 89 Cadillac Brougham. I found that on some days, the only way to keep the car going was to sit behind the wheel and keep my foot on the pedal, giving it short bursts of gas to keep the engine from stalling. When it kicked down to low idle (choke opened), I'd need to leave it running for another 5 minutes so that it didn't stall under initial load.

I remember having to replace the Buick's carb after some garage goon stripped the thread of the fuel filter housing, spilling fuel all over the manifold. It really changed the car's character... after that, it needed three pumps before starting on days below -10.

Carbs were tempermental as hell during cold days, but gave the car a lot more character.

Reply to
Matt Keefer

The law doesn't apply to American cops. I see them turn on their bombs to get through a red light all the time.

Reply to
Matt Keefer

You wanna see a stressed pilot, just get on one of the milk run flights across the North Slope on a day when it's -40. Most of these are Beech 99's or Cessna Navajo twin engine turboprops. They *have* to shut the engines off to allow passengers and freight to be move on and off the planes. The anxiety level for the pilots is a geometric progression if things don't progress fast enough! (I've never seen a plane get too cold to start though, so anxiety seems to do the job!)

Of course, those are propeller driven planes. Here in Barrow the

737's that Alaska Air flys in don't shut down the engines while on the ground.

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

Reply to
Floyd Davidson

I was a C-130 flight engineer in the Coast Guard, and the only thing in the flight manual about operation in extremely cold weather was to let the engines run in ground idle for some brief interval after starting (5 minutes or less, as I recall) before putting a load on them, when the ambient temperature is below some level. It was a really extreme temperature threshold;

-40F comes to mind.

There was definitely nothing in there about not shutting the engines down at all if the temperature is below a certain value. Maybe there are special, supplementary procedures employed by the NY ANG for use during the Antarctic winter. I never heard about any special cold-weather precautions being taken with our planes that are based in Kodiak, Alaska.

I have JPEGs of several of several LC-130s parked wingtip to wingtip in Antarctica. There are special heating units that blow air onto the prop domes through the holes in the spinner tips, and into the intakes, to warm the engines prior to starting. That would appear to be what they do when the planes have remained overnight, which I'd think they do more often than not because their staging area (Christchurch) is such a long flight away.

If it's Plattsburg AFB, New York, it would have to have been. The New York ANG took over the Antarctic support mission from the Navy several years ago.

Floyd Davids> (I've never seen a plane get too cold to start though, so

It's not the engines so much as the batteries. Extremely cold temperatures can reduce the cranking power of batteries.

Barrow isn't very big. I'd think that because of the small number of people getting on and off, the planes don't stop long enough to justify the hassle of shutting down and starting up again.

Geoff

Reply to
Geoff Miller

Chokes increase the richness of the air/fuel mixture, but they do it by restricting -- "choking" -- the volume of air coming into the engine, not by increasing the amount of fuel.

Since gasoline is volatile, that gas comes right out of the oil as soon as it warms up. And since the engine is running with no load on it *before* it warms up, I'm not sure I see how any additional wear, let alone damage, would be inflicted on the engine.

I saw a training film years ago about how to cold-proof an airplane in preparation for letting it sit in extremely low temperatures overnight. The airplane used as an ex- ample was an old P-2 Neptune, which is relevant because it had piston engines. Using controls in the cockpit, it was actually possible to pump small amounts of gasoline into the engine crankcases to keep the oil from thickening. No harm was done, since the gas evaporated when the engines warmed up the next time they were started.

What's the purpose of revving the engine a few times? (I take it that this is what you mean by "accelerate.")

Geoff

Reply to
Geoff Miller

What brought that on? Is it being presented as a safety issue, an environmental issue, or a theft-prevention measure?

Geoff

Reply to
Geoff Miller

Geoff Miller wrote in alt.autos.gm

Probably theft prevention. The Seattle Tacoma area is one of the leading areas in the country for auto theft, and one of the more common ways to lose a car is to start it up on a cold morning, and sit inside drinking a cup of coffee. And many of the people go out and find their car missing.

Reply to
Dick C

"Floyd Davidson" wrote

It gets plenty cold enough here to be able to see what happens to vehicles when you cold start them. So you live somewhere "really" cold. In that case, your advice is correct..."for you".

Feel free. Might as well call probably 80 percent of our one million inhabitants of this city idiots too. Our cars start quite well and don't "blow up" because of the cold starts. I work as an automotive technician for a living and engine failures are almost always due to poor maintenance, coolant intrusion into the engine oil...etc. Not cold starts on regular oil.

What does occur to me is that you really do have no clue. The whining noise is "metal being shaved off of cylinders, bearings etc" eh? That's a good one. Just for you own personal info, the whining noises happen to be emanating mainly from the alternator, and a bit from the power steering pump. I couldn't hear any whining noise from the engine anyway, as the piston slap is loud enough to drown out any other noises. Oh yeah....the piston slap is there at all temperatures, don't get excited.

I didn't say at -50C. If I lived in those conditions and drove in those conditions for any extended period of time, I'm sure I'd change to a different oil and use my block heater. Even now, if I get the chance, and I remember, I'll plug the car in. Simply for ease of starting and quicker heat.

Please....I've gotten more then that out of most of the vehicle I've driven. Two of them that I drove for another

4-5 years already had over 200,000 miles on them. Other, more gullible people on the internet will probably lap up your nonsense, but I've actually been driving and repairing cars long enough to know better.

What planet are you from?

Ian

Reply to
shiden_Kai

"Michael" wrote

I'm not against using a block heater...it's just all the dire predictions that people make. You "must" use a block heater, and an oil pan heater, and battery blanket (actually, that last one is probably the smartest of the bunch) in order to start in -30C weather. Give me a break....I've been starting cars for years in that kind of weather unplugged. I'll take cold starts any day, over not changing your oil in a timely matter....when it comes to what will "blow up" your engine.

I have no doubt there are many places that are colder then -36C. In that case, they use different techniques, which will include synthetic oil and always plugged in or garaged. Makes sense to me.

Ian

Reply to
shiden_Kai

Way down south here in Grand Forks, we hit -44F (-42C) one morning--I've got a .jpg of the gate at the airbase that said -34F (I guess when it said -44 folks had other things on their minds.) When it gets that cold the slightest breeze is painful. Block heaters & garages at night, then hope for a block heater available during the day. Down to -10F, car starts just fine when cold. Always had it plugged in if it was colder.

Reply to
Rapid Rick

Stratton ANG base in Scotia, NY, or maybe it's listed as Glenville, NY. I work just up the road from it, big airshow there every year and they've had the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds perform. I think the Blue Angels were there the last 2 years, they fly right over my place of work, so I get to see them in action.

Reply to
Mike Levy

Are you some kind of a pussy or what? Every morning for the last 2 weeks, its been -10F. I've gone outside and started my car, waited 5 minutes and drove away. Never had a problem. She fired right up at -20F with wind last weekend. No block heater or anything like that. So you're saying that we should just stay home because its below 0? Come on, I just start thinkin bout puttin on a jacket when it gets to 0. What a dumbass

Reply to
Mistercmk

It's the engine not the battery. If the engine is warm enough, it starts without needing much from the battery. If it's too cold to start, all the battery in the world won't start it. The batteries are also fairly well protected, and are not going to get so cold for several hours that they wouldn't provide enough energy to crank the engines. On the other hand, the engine doesn't have to get nearly as cold as the battery would before it has a problem. Remember that the engine is designed to get rid of heat. The battery can be in an insulated container designed to keep it warm for hours...

But the big problem is that they do not have facilities in the villages to heat the plane. If it gets cold enough, it'll be there until someone brings in the equipment to restart it. That's big bucks.

BTW, it isn't just that "extreme cold" reduces cranking power. It's a simple case of the colder it gets the less energy can be extracted from the battery. I don't recall specific figures for lead-acid cells, but with each degree in temperature drop there is a drop in available energy. However, even at -50F a typical battery will provide enough energy to start a warm engine. Its just that if it doesn't start, with a warm battery you can crank it for several minutes convincing yourself that it really won't start! With a cold battery, a few minutes or even less than a minute is all you get. (Either way, it isn't the battery!)

A whole 737 full of people and cargo is just as big in Barrow as it is anywhere else.

And they commonly don't stop *anywhere* long enough to justify the hassle, but it is less expensive to shut it down if restarting it is easy and reliable. However, the facilities to power the plane and to restart are not economical here, nor are mechanics available if there is a hitch. Plus, it is true that there is never any reason to hold a plane here for any length of time. They typically do a turnaround in about 1 hour. At other airports (Anchorage is a good example) they may have scheduling reasons to keep an airplane on the ground for half an hour longer, or even more, just to wait for passengers from another arrival that might be transferring to that particular aircraft.

Hence, at locations other than Anchorage and Fairbanks (Juneau I'm not sure about) in Alaska they leave them running more as an insurance policy that anything else.

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

Reply to
Floyd Davidson

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