Engine warm up

[jeff kushner]

Maybe John can answer MrS.... but most vehicle lubricants have not been engineered to land -40 in the curve of allowable temps. The question might be rephrased to "for those that don't warm up at -40, what are the failures?" Good question though.

The science at ultra-low temps is that loaded bearings, especially "insert bearings" suffer damage over time from the galling of the surfaces(metal transfer) due to a lack of lubrication providing the needed film. They try to minimize this from happening by using materials with higher surface tension. Still, the resulting damage will "loosen" an engine, as the engineered clearances extend. In many modern engine, reliance on high oil pressure and lots of insert bearings magnify the issue. Cams, crankshafts, rod big-ends....all the highest loaded bearings are now often "inserts".

Also, this occurs on heat-stripped cylinder walls when shutting off a really hot engine. The oil on the walls flashes off and w/i 8 hrs, rust is forming(believe it or not). Then, the owner starts the very cold engine, with oil that does not move for 40 seconds or so.... and he loads the engine by driving cold. While those oxides don't cause much deformation in the cyl walls, the oxides are now in your oil and too small to be captured by the filter.

Comparatively, gasoline is cheap.....jmho

jeff

 

[Plati]

Holy cow, I didn't realize how difficult minus 40 (Celsius or Fahrenheit) would be on a vehicle.
I may want to rethink my ski trip to the Powder Highway!!
https://www.minus40.info/ice/frozentruck.html

 

[JohnT]

I'll bite.

Firstly to be clear I'm not talking about wind chill I mean real honest to goodness -40. You often hit that overnight and at 7am as you head off to work with the sun not risen yet it's actually the coldest part of the night.


I have tried toping up the wifes car with 0w20 at -30 and watched as the oil poured like a good quality honey or lucas stop smoke treatment.


Power steering lines blow out regularly by uncaring drivers who jump in, start the car and crank the wheel as they exit a parking lot. Even power steering fluid thickens up to silly levels.


Older batteries >3 years or moderately discharged batteries freeze solid.


Tires that have rested overnight take a few hundred yards to flex enough to soften to round.


Your transmission oil is like honey and shifts are weird for want of a better word


So the reasons to start and let warm up are many but include …


Allowing the oil to thin before applying any load. In fairness both ford turbos I own will not apply any boost until engine temp gets up a bit. The 1.0 inline 3 in the Focus is very noticeable. Yeah, I get that most wear is going to happen in the first few seconds, it’s why you should plug your car in to the block so that it's warmer than ambient. But even then your oil isn't behaving like oil you know and love.

Allowing the metal parts to expand, you want to hear piston slap, start and drive a triton 3v 5.4 from this type of cold.

Allow the engine bay to come up to more sane minus temps so rubber and plastic parts can flex a bit. Your exhaust manifold is acting like a big radiator and under hood temps rise quite a lot if the wind isn't blowing.

Allow the transmission pump oil around a bit and thin it out some, not much because the only heat generation is from the oil pump, but every bit helps.

Allow the interior to warm up so plastic parts don’t break, the seat doesn't crack and the interior of windows don’t freeze up. And you’re not freezing to death waiting for the cabin to warm. You haven’t lived until you are using your credit card to scrape the inside of your windows as you drive down the highway

Even -45c windscreen fluid craps out as it contacts the window once you are moving so the ethanol or alcohol evaporates before the wipers have time to clear it unless your windscreen has been warmed a bit by the demister blower.

Seriously, if you haven’t experienced this type of cold it’s hard to describe. Metal gets brittle, plastics shatter, ice is like iron, and frostbite is severe and happens fast. Add wind, either natural or because you are moving, and any heat generated by engines, transmission, wheel bearing friction dissipates fast.


You give your pride and joy the best chance to survive another winter by treating it gently in these temps, allowing time to warm up and driving moderately until you car sounds and behaves more normally.


John

 

[Trainmaster]

Cars are designed to take some abuse, and driving a cold engine hard is abuse. Most cars are so good today that they'll last until their warranty is expired, even when abused. And no manufacturer will tell you their engine has to be warmed before driving.

You want to get 250,000 out of a motor and transmission, you let them warm up before you get on it.

 

[Flexpedition]

When snow and ice melt off of my vehicle, it can really get humid in my heated garage.
Probably have a mold issue as a result. And rust forming on my garage door rails.

If thats not bad enough, the melted snow is filthy, leaving dirt rings on my epoxied floor when the water evaporates.

Few years ago a wind blown snow drift, 3-4 inches tall, formed along the garage door. When the door opened a section of the drift fell inward. When the door then closed, the opener obstacle detected it and reversed the door. Had to hand shovel it out. Took atleast 2-3 hours for the garage to warm back up above 60°F.

My point is, winter sucks south of the Canadian border too.

 

[JExpedition07]

Some mornings it takes a bit to idle down, I’m sitting in my expy as I type this. It’s 23 Fahrenheit here currently on the dash. Truck has been on high idle (1,250 RPM) for 5 minutes so far. I don’t drive until it drops to 900-1,000 RPM.

High idle goes in stages 1250-1000-750 depending on temp and as it warms up.

 

[ExplorerTom]

Some mornings it takes a bit to idle down, I’m sitting in my expy as I type this. It’s 23 Fahrenheit here currently on the dash. Truck has been on high idle (1,250 RPM) for 5 minutes so far. I don’t drive until it drops to 900-1,000 RPM.

High idle goes in stages 1250-1000-750 depending on temp and as it warms up.

23 degrees F isn’t that cold. If you are still on high idle after 5 minutes, I think you’ve got other problems.

 

[Clemson82]

Some mornings it takes a bit to idle down, I’m sitting in my expy as I type this. It’s 23 Fahrenheit here currently on the dash. Truck has been on high idle (1,250 RPM) for 5 minutes so far. I don’t drive until it drops to 900-1,000 RPM.

High idle goes in stages 1250-1000-750 depending on temp and as it warms up.

I don't know where in New York you are, but I heard on The Weather Channel that Syracuse, NY gets more snow than any other city in the United States! I think I'd be "investing" in a garage...

 

[Plati]

I don't know where in New York you are, but I heard on The Weather Channel that Syracuse, NY gets more snow than any other city in the United States! I think I'd be "investing" in a garage...

I believe in parking outdoors, have a garage but both Expy's live in the outdoors. My logic for winter is, you pull an iced and salted vehicle into a warm'ish garage where everything melts and its wet all night = more corrosion. Besides my small garage is full of tools and other stuff. And Expys are too big for my garage.

North of Syracuse is what we call the Tug Hill Plateau. It gets heavy duty lake effect snowfall due to a number of factors such as the long fetch down the Great Lakes & its higher elevation. Tug Hill can totally dwarf the snowfall of any other city in NYS although in recent years it hasn't lived up to its legendary past. This weekend it may get 6 feet!

A great website for snowmobilers and other snow lovers in Tug Hill with a pile of webcams is http://www.northernchateau.com/northernchateau.htm

The sister site is http://www.gotsnowcams.com/gotsnowcams.htm

 

[JExpedition07]

23 degrees F isn’t that cold. If you are still on high idle after 5 minutes, I think you’ve got other problems.

No issues here that I know of. Engine runs great and doesn’t burn an ounce of oil. Dropped right down to 750 RPM when I finished typing that reply. I could have been exaggerating since I wasn’t looking at the clock when I started it, but it felt like 5 minutes to me when I hopped back in.

Also drove my dads 16’ F-250 6.2L (30,000 miles) from a cold start today.....had to be picked up from service dept after sitting over night. Sat at 1,100 RPM for several minutes before it dropped to 800 RPM....then drove off.

 

[JExpedition07]

This sparked an interesting conversation. My old man said he noticed this on both his 2011& 2016 Super Duties (prolonged high idle). Both ordered and bought new. Said his older trucks didn’t do that. And it’s got me thinking, my old Explorer idled right down too as far as I can remember...until I junked her. This Expedition has always warmed up a bit longer. After that initial start of the day it seems they don’t do the elevated idle again.

Did Ford do some changes to the ECU to keep these idling higher longer?

 

[Jimdar]

This sparked an interesting conversation. My old man said he noticed this on both his 2011& 2016 Super Duties (prolonged high idle). Both ordered and bought new. Said his older trucks didn’t do that. And it’s got me thinking, my old Explorer idled right down too as far as I can remember...until I junked her. This Expedition has always warmed up a bit longer. After that initial start of the day it seems they don’t do the elevated idle again.

Did Ford do some changes to the ECU to keep these idling higher longer?

Could be for ever tougher emissions. Get the cats hot faster.

 

[1955moose]

Here's a dumb thought. Your SUV won't kick off the high idle circuit from the computer, in even the warmest of Winters, here just outside of San Francisco, where I reside in. So why oh why would you drive off in below 0 degree's Fahrenheit with the engine racing at 1500 rpm or so? Are you really that pushed for time? Wake up 5 minutes earlier! Come on guys, you can try all the scientific crap you want, whether the motor will last or not, but really, another 4-6 minutes running your engine? I leave at 6:45 each morning, and my Suv runs for a minimum of 2 minutes Your worried about less than 1/4 gallon of fuel, sell your Expedition, and buy a hybrid. I heard Cadillac is making a 100 percent plug in, in 2020. Let the damn thing warm up, or move to a warmer climate, eh!

Sent from my N9131 using Tapatalk

 

[TobyU]

First of all, all engines amaze me with running at all as well as they do and esp for as long as they do BUT I am amazed they tolerate the fairly two extremes they operate in.
The exact same vehicles live in 115 degree infernos and also in months of below freezing temps.

This gets me into my complaint that I think manufactures as far back as the 60s should have had different codes for rust belt states or cold etc.

Since new cars are sold at dealers and you know where they will be shipped to etc, vehicles going to MI for example should all have the winter and salt code.
Bigger CCA battery, limited slip axle, stainless brake lines (to hell with cost), factory undercoating....but this would have cut into add on sales and aftermarket like Ziebart I guess.

Kind of like you can get a 4x4 but often a package give you limited slip ans skid plates.

A little of this is seen in Florida and maybe other places.
I all my life in Ohio I had never seen a Grand Cherokee that wasn't 4wd. In Florida you will find lots. I passed on looking at a Navi a few months ago in FL because it was only 2wd.

 

[jeff kushner]

I helped Kerry move her sister/husband up to Schenectady a couple of months ago and I remember wondering why folks up there have "regular cars" when they get REAL snow?

jeff

 

[cmiles97]

A source I trust says you can do more damage to your vehicle during extended warm ups.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a19086/warming-up-your-car-in-the-cold-just-harms-engine/

From the article:


When your engine is cold, the gasoline is less likely to evaporate and create the correct ratio of air and vaporized fuel for combustion. Engines with electronic fuel injection have sensors that compensate for the cold by pumping more gasoline into the mixture. The engine continues to run rich in this way until it heats up to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

"That's a problem because you're actually putting extra fuel into the combustion chamber to make it burn and some of it can get onto the cylinder walls," Stephen Ciatti, a mechanical engineer who specializes in combustion engines at the Argonne National Laboratory, told Business Insider. "Gasoline is an outstanding solvent and it can actually wash oil off the walls if you run it in those cold idle conditions for an extended period of time."

The life of components like piston rings and cylinder liners can be significantly reduced by gasoline washing away the lubricating oil.

Driving your car is the fastest way to warm the engine up to 40 degrees so it switches back to a normal fuel to air ratio.

 

[cmiles97]

Here's another, road & track saying basically the same thing. This one has an engineer explaining why in detail.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/videos/a30249/why-you-shouldnt-warm-up-your-car/

 

[jeff kushner]

If you want to start & drive, it's perfectly fine since it's your truck. We all perceive things differently and our beliefs are based on those perceptions....it's all good.

Critical thinking shows me that many factors were ignored, focusing solely on pros/cons of the single aspect while actually ignoring far more important ones, like skyrocketing the BMEP right at the moment of least lubrication(stone-cold startup) but to be fair, the authors have their perceptions as well...but their science is sorely lacking method fwiw.

A more cynical approach would be; "What does 40F have to do with anything other than a lower idle speed?

Heck, one was more worried about you seeing out of your windshield than the destruction going on in front of the firewall......

Trainm....put it perfectly....they are all good enough to handle nearly anything throughout the warranty periods.

Remember though, no one "is a dummy" for their opinions guys....no matter how you personally believe.

jeff

 

[Trainmaster]

I remember wondering why folks up there have "regular cars" when they get REAL snow?

Because they're New Yorkers. The Government will take care of all their problems.

 

[TobyU]

If you want to start & drive, it's perfectly fine since it's your truck. We all perceive things differently and our beliefs are based on those perceptions....it's all good.

Critical thinking shows me that many factors were ignored, focusing solely on pros/cons of the single aspect while actually ignoring far more important ones, like skyrocketing the BMEP right at the moment of least lubrication(stone-cold startup) but to be fair, the authors have their perceptions as well...but their science is sorely lacking method fwiw.

A more cynical approach would be; "What does 40F have to do with anything other than a lower idle speed?

Heck, one was more worried about you seeing out of your windshield than the destruction going on in front of the firewall......

Trainm....put it perfectly....they are all good enough to handle nearly anything throughout the warranty periods.

Remember though, no one "is a dummy" for their opinions guys....no matter how you personally believe.

jeff

Yes, their science is lacking.
Maybe more of an issue on old carbed cars with choke almost closed but modern cars are perfectly capable of keeping mixture not too out of control.

Cars go into closed loop withing seconds usually not minutes.

Washing the walls can be a concern BUT even in the old days when they said you could flood one our and "wash the rings away ( or out)" they meant a lot or extra fuel. Flooded plugs, non firing cylinders from so much fuel going in...AND even then it was only you could or might do damage.

No way a fuel injected car running normally is going to harm itself.
Articles like that are just doing what is so common now in society...Shaping the world and controlling peoples' actions by convincing them with "facts" and reasons, and statistics that are not exactly accurate or pertinent.