Engine warm up?

[Dan]

But I will say that we always take extra pains to not abuse forced-induction cars until they're warm (and we don't shut 'em off without a cool-down either).

You know, that's where I wonder why the manufacturers don't do anything about that at the engine management level. My Audi is all to happy to go right into boost even with the engine cold. Even at light throttle, if I'm not paying attention, I'll be at 5 psi, not good on a cold engine.

 

[Accumulator]

Devilsown- I'd think that the primary concern in that case is that you'd get a lot of condensation that woulddn't get cooked away (since the temps would never get very high). I doubt that the idling would make much difference as it's not like some extended blast down the highway.



But as long as you change your oil on the "severe duty" schedule I kinda doubt it'll ever cause problems. I really think people are underestimating how much abuse the average vehicle can easily withstand...there are a lot of grandma-mobiles running around with six-figure miles on them and those vehicles have gone through a lot of abuse.

You know, that's where I wonder why the manufacturers don't do anything about that at the engine management level..

Eh, I'd always rather have the car do whatever I tell it to, even if that whatever isn't good for it. If, for some reason, I need full power while the engine was cold, it had better deliver that.



IIRC, some vehicles *do* have all kinds of protection like that built into their ECUs, though I can't think of any specific marques/models right off-hand.



Speaking of turbo'ed Audis, I've had/driven some with *high* miles that were never really pampered in this regard; no problems at all.

 

[WAS]

Take a brand new car, start it at -35 degrees C (that's around -31 F), and "just drive off". I've seen someone do this with a 3 month old Lexus LS430. Got about 2minutes down the road, driving like a normal summer day, and BOOM, engine clutters and dies. Unfortunately I don't know the mechanical aftermath, but I do know that something smashed its way through the oil pan, as the oil pan had a jagged rod sticking through it and of course all the oil leaked out (looked like a piston rod.... little out of place for that to come through the block though).



Anyways, point is, driving your car off when it's cold in the same manner as you would when it's warm is moronic. Engines need time to warm up, to get oil flowing and to get the internal parts to correct operating temp. Would you start a snowmobile and just rip off ? Dirt bike ? ATV ? Motorcycle ? Lawn mower ? You let your oven heat up to the temp the recipe says or you just throw in your baking ? You let Microsoft Windows finish booting up Windows and loading the taskbar before you go click-happy ? Prime your hot water tank after installing a new one before having an hour long shower ?



Yes, I'm getting wayyyy off topic and base here, but you get the idea.... we let different things warm up and get to operating temp all the time, yet when it comes specifically to a vehicle engine, some of us decide we don't need to.



My vehicle gets run MINIMUM 5 minutes when it gets down to -35 C, ideally about 10 minutes.

 

[Accumulator]

WAS- Well, those are pretty extreme conditions you're talking about there!

 

[WAS]

WAS- Well, those are pretty extreme conditions you're talking about there!

Actually, yes, and I didn't elaborate on that part. The colder it gets, the longer my engine gets to warm up. In +10 degrees weather (that's around 50 degress F), my engine gets about 15 seconds, then I'm off.

 

[kbohip]

You know, that's where I wonder why the manufacturers don't do anything about that at the engine management level. My Audi is all to happy to go right into boost even with the engine cold. Even at light throttle, if I'm not paying attention, I'll be at 5 psi, not good on a cold engine.

The only car I know of that has any sort of different operating procedures when the engine is cold was the previous BMW M5. It had a redline that changed (ie. went higher) as the engine warmed up. You can see below in the picture that when cold the redline is only 4,000 rpm but when fully warmed up it changes to it's normal 6,500 rpm. A pretty neat feature, but silly in the end. I don't know anyone dumb enough with a stick to redline an engine when cold!:doh