How do you de ice in the morning ?

It is! My neighbour start his diesel Ford Fiesta at am.

It is! My neighbour start his diesel Ford Fiesta at 6 am.

(Bloody spellchecker removed 6)

Yep. Works a treat. Probably also the cheapest method too (esp with economy 7 rates pre-7.30 a.m.) given the price of de-icer and petrol.

My neighbour turns his diesel on, but I've spent upto 20 minutes with an ice scraper. If the nieghbour's out there the same time as me then I'm almost choking on the diesel :-( It stinks!

I use an ice scraper with a glove on it to keep my hand warm. When I'm done with that, I use the rubber part of my other scraper (without a glove) to wipe of all the little flakes of ice/snow.

De-icer can damage the paint and I don't like to idle the engine, especially when it's cold.

Nice feedback guys ... I remember my first car - Morris Tourer 1932 ( - no I'm ol d but not THAT old ) bought it off a girlfriends dad for 7 quid after I past my test at 17 side valve engine, excelerator peddle in middle , no synco on gears - just 3 as I remember + 3ins play on steering wheel etc. etc. Now that was driving !! Stood outside when we used to have real Winters ... parrafin sump heater underneath which often or not used to blow out I guess some sort of ant freeze in rad . temp guage outside on rad top I think it had some sort of heater - when it worked The 6v battery was often flat so had to crank - yes I did say CRANK most of the time which was a bugger

Ah the good old days of motoring :-)

Why ?

Because it's no good for the engine and a ridiculous waste of fuel. It only takes a few minutes of driving for a car to start warming up these days, but absolutely ages if just left to idle.

The general concensus is that idling for up to 30sec at first startup while you put your seatbelt on and press buttons is a good idea to make sure the oil's up round the engine, but that's it.

Get kettle full of warm water. Go out to car. Start engine. Pour warm water over screen and windows. Take kettle back inside Drive off

They are good, but am I the only one who finds the little squiggly wires in the windscreen very distracting? I keep finding my eyes focusing on them while driving.

Probably just me......

I've heard about not thrashing an engine when its cold, I've heard not labouring a cold engine too, but not idling a cold engine really takes the biscuit.

-- James

Bucket of hot water - depending on where I park the car the night before, I can sometimes do this from the bathroom window!

Not quite. Starting the engine up then driving off from cold is more damaging.

Mine's a diesel so the above doesn't happen.

-- James

James> I've heard about not thrashing an engine when its cold, James> I've heard not labouring a cold engine too, but not idling James> a cold engine really takes the biscuit. -- James

ISTR being told that when cold and idling the engine over-fuels slightly and this excess fuel can "wash" some of the oil from the cylinder walls reducing lubrication and causing excess wear!

AndyC

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Can't see a modern, cat-fitted car overfuelling that much - maybe it was true in cars with manual chokes if you left the thing idling on full choke, but I don't think a modern engine is going to come to much harm whether you drive off gently from cold or leave it idling. It may waste some fuel, but so does using a fan heater, warming a kettle of water and so on.

The message from andrew contains these words:

Wow, an Kraftwerk fan!

The message from "Steve Burt" contains these words:

Almost ditto but I have a 2-ltr conditioner bottle filled from the hot tap so I don't have to go back in, I can just sling it in the passenger's footwell.

The message from James contains these words:

Nope, he's right, it's a really bad thing to do and most makers' manuals warn against it. Drive off sensibly is best. Idling it means that there's loads of fuel entering the engine (because it's on choke or the modern equivalnet of) which condenses on the cold bores and washes the oil off. That and it takes ages to warm up and is very polluting.