Warming it up: Muir vs VW

IMO, letting it idle for 30 seconds wouldn't hurt. The oil should be moving around the engine by then.

-- Mel P.

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Muir is sharing his wealth of Model A experience.

All air cooled engines warm up fairly fast, so long as their cooling system has not been disabled (ie, air vanes, thermostat, etc).

The VW instructions have more to do with the TRANNY rather than the engine. The tranny gets only splash-lubrication. The INPUT shaft is located ABOVE the output shaft. On a cold morning the main shaft won't get any oil until the output shaft starts spinning... and that won't happen until you put the thing in gear and start to move.

The clue to this came from an German guy, slightly older than God, who used to work for Hermann Cook VW in Encinetas, California, just down the road from me. Talking about Volkswagens in the snow up near Ramona, he told a young lady it wasn't good to let her bus warm up less she stayed inside the bus. Took us a while to winkle it out of him but he meant for her to stay IN the bus so she could keep the CLUTCH depressed. 'Not good' warming it up in neutral. 'Iss in de book' meaning the owners manual. Except the ENGLISH version of the owner's manual does not give you any options, simply start it up and take off. Or, sit there with the clutch depressed until you feel some heat THEN take off.

Truth is, I've always let my VW's warm up for a minute or two. Force of habit rather than anything technical. Based on 40 years of experience my trannies seem to last about as long as everyone elses. But I've never let the thing sit there idling for thirty minutes at a time... and I know some folks who do. And they DO seem to have a higher incidence of tranny problems.

For what it's worth. (There really aren't enough VW's left to matter HOW you warm the things up :-)

-Bob Hoover

Nice to see you around Mr.Hoover, any fun stories to share? Read all the ones I've been able to locate, including The Sermons...

Take care. P.J.Berg.

Thanks Bob, answers an old question of mine also.

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Sometimes, being a newbie -- in this case to VW's and to the newsgroup

-- is good. We ask the silly-simple questions that might have been lingering in the backs of the minds of those who have been around too long to ask.

Happy to be of service.

Mike "Still trying to think up a tagline" Elliott

As I remember reading, the long warm up was after you'd disconnected the choke mechanism, which he considered evil. He's not really wrong, a badly adjusted choke or even a well adjusted one runs the mixture to rich which will dilute the oil. Its just not that practical. I favor starting out slow for several blocks using only 1st and 2nd and then only accelerating moderately until the engine and tranny are fully warmed up.

Mitch