Short journeys

There's plenty of life in this yet son, plenty of life!

What would people suggest for me then. Driving to work I`ve got about 5 miles of normal roads before I get to a motorway. Returning home from work I have about 500m of road before a fairly short uphill sliproad joining a motorway. I don`t have th thrash the car to get up to speed, but it does need a fairly hard acceleration to join the motorway safely. At this point the engine is still cold. To date I just get in, start up and go, but I`m curious to see what people think about this situation.

Thanks all!

The car which I've had the longest in recent years was a Subaru which I bought new in 1983 and sold recently (after 23 years) with about 300,000 miles on the clock.

For longer than that we have had a household rule that our cars have to be driven at least 3 miles once started (unless they're going to be restarted within a short time). When sold, the exhaust system was in good condition and completely original. And I was getting a consistent 6 or 7 years life from each battery.

A great many unnecessary car trips were avoided. The kids walked to school, and I walked the couple of miles to work and back every day.

All in all, it turned out to be an extremely reliable car, and part of that was undoubtedly attributable to the 3-mile-minimum rule.

John

You need to move your place of work further from the motorway, or work somewhere else.

Simple as.

Or...Park your car a long way away from work. That way you will undertake a longer journey before reaching the M way. Or are you simply bone idle? Your lazy ways will do you no good you know.

Rick

Can I presume there is no motorway junction closer to home, so that this

500M and uphill stretch can be bypassed?

If you have no other option, I would suggest using the 2nd gear all the way till the motorway.

Or even better, reverse it.

Some may argue that the engine is cold at both starts of the motorway trip. :)

I have a similar situation from time to time and all I can say is don't seek the redline, merely, don't thrash it as you say.

It`s very rare for me to do less than a 40 mile journey to and from work. I get food delivered to the door by Mr Tesco (works out better money wise than going shopping for it myself), and everyone and everywhere I visit is either less than a 30 minute walk, or a fair distance away to justify the car. Very rare for me to do anything like a 1-2 mile drive, apart from going the post office with stuff sold on ebay.

The 500m and uphill bit is just as I leave work to join the motorway, the alternative is to mess about driving nasty little roads 5 miles north to get on the motorway and head south, getting caught up in traffic lights all over the place and adding a good 20 minutes onto the journey. The trip from work to the motorway consists of 2 roundabouts with a short road between them, I join the road, turn 180 at the first roundabout and then turn right at the second (yes it is doubling back on myself, but it`s the only way to get there :-) ). I have tended to leave the car in second and keep a steady

30mph until joining the motorway, then taking it up to about 45 in 2nd then 60 in 3rd, joining the motorway then moving to 5th gear. This isn`t thrashing the engine, it`ll do about 30 in 1st, 55ish in 2nd and 75ish in 3rd, I don`t know what the other gears go up to as I can`t afford to lose the license :-)

Provided you don't need what you've actually ordered...;-)

You've posted to the wrong thread, see elsewhere.

The heater is blowing warm air out at the end of the second street, after less than a mile, and the temp gague is in the nromal position after a few more miles, certainly before it gets to the motorway :-)

Heh. Sounds fine, subject to the usual "don't cane it until you've driven it for fifteen miles or twenty minutes" type thing.

Mine blows heat even when the engine is cold, just the coolant is warm (thanks to an auxiliary fuel heater ya see).

About the only time I ever cane it is leaving the motorway when i`m getting home, when i`ve had some numpty in a BMW bugging me. We get to the roundabout, and the BMW driver is always appalled to be left for dead by a £700 bright yellow Astra :-)