I have seen
articles lately on “popular” websites that claim that starting your automobile
and warming it up will harm the engine. That this is a practice that went away
with carbureted engines. The claim is that gas is a solvent and it will wash
the cylinders of the engine and there for cause damage because of lack of
lubrication. For those of us that live up north where the temperatures
sometimes never get above the doughnut it is quite the opposite. There are other
components in an engine that need oil so that it does not cause damage (main
bearings, rod bearings, crankshaft and the list continues on and on they are
all important for the engine to operate). When oil is cold it does not flow as
it does when it is warm, this can cause the other components to suffer catastrophic
failure. If you would like see for yourself what oil does when it is cold you
can purchase some Lucas oil additive at your local parts store or Walmart.
Place the Lucas in the freezer and compare the difference to when it was at
room temperature versus how thick it is at freezing temperature. This
experiment will show you the extreme effect cold has on oil because Lucas is
naturally thick, this however does not take away from the result cold has on
oil. I know that it is always sunny in California but as for those in the north
where the weather can be a little less forgiving warming up your vehicle is not
just about getting into a warm car. Getting into a cold automobile and taking
off after you start the engine is hard on the rest of the engine and transmission.
Yes fuel injected engines are more efficient but that does not mean that the
oil has now taken on a whole new form because of the engines new efficiency. “Old
guy story lol” back in the day we used to change the viscosity of the oil in
our vehicles to thinner oil for better lubrication at start up (ie. 10-30
summer to 10-40 winter). As for longevity I have run many automobiles over 200 thousand
and I have one that had hit almost a half million before I laid it to rest. With
that said warming up a car has nothing to do with making sure your fingers and
checks are warm. Over revving an engine when they are cold could still cause a
connecting rod to fail because oil not engine efficiency is still the same. P.S. a choke always kept the vehicle running rich until either it turned off because it was warm or it was disengaged. So the argument that the article used is a little irreverent. |