Engine warm up

[jeff kushner]

Either you let the engine and transmission warm up a bit or you drive very lightly until it warms up. Only a woman would nail it when the thing's cold. Good way to wear things out fast.

This is exactly the reason when buying a used car,bike or truck....that I want to see them start it from dead-cold. I have seen owners start a dead-cold engine and begin revving it because they think YOU want to hear it. If they just let it warm on it's own, I can hear the engine and how things sound cold.....they never lie.

I'm not going to tell guys they have to do anything to their trucks....it's all yours, do what you want....just own the results as being due to those choices.

I never knew so many 5.4's were on duty in adjoining industries Flex....& you're 100% right...Fire Marshall requires testing monthly with a written log hung inside the enclosure if the Gensets are engaged in Life Safety power.

jeff

 

[Boostedbus]

My company has thousands of generators across the globe. Dozen in every large city. A fair number of the smaller fixed ones are Generac ranging between 50kW - 90kW, most of them powered by...... Ford 5.4L V8s.

Once a month they are test started and immediately throttled up and full load applied. Makes no difference if they are gasoline, propane, or CNG powered. Ran full and hard for 30 minutes and then shut down for the next 30 days or until the local electric company has an outage. (outage = meth head recycling copper)

Example out of its enclosure:

Yeah I was surprised 2 years ago after building a customer a new pool house to go with his new state of the art pool, he decided to have a generator set to power everything on his 189 acre farm. Some company came in and set a propane powered Modular Ford V10 with a turbocharger! I was jealous as hell as I gawked with awe at the beast! I joked with the owner about swapping it out with my 5.4 in my utility van telling him that he didn’t need all that power. Of course I would have had to leave the doghouse off to fit it.... but that would’ve been ok because she sure was impressive to look at!

 

[Motorcity muscle]

Laptop been acting up, finally got it working. Good feedback on long high idle, will plan on a tune up in spring. Oil life at 38% already, not even 2,000 miles, wondering if it's running rich and thinning oil, getting 17 miles highway and 13.7 int town.

 

[ExplorerTom]

I don’t think the oil life monitor is able to actually sample the oil when it’s determining the % remaining. It makes a “best guess” based on a number of parameters that it can measure (engine run time, temp, rpm......).

 

[ManUpOrShutUp]

Laptop been acting up, finally got it working. Good feedback on long high idle, will plan on a tune up in spring. Oil life at 38% already, not even 2,000 miles, wondering if it's running rich and thinning oil, getting 17 miles highway and 13.7 int town.

I don’t think the oil life monitor is able to actually sample the oil when it’s determining the % remaining. It makes a “best guess” based on a number of parameters that it can measure (engine run time, temp, rpm......).

ExplorerTom is correct. It's essentially just making an educated guess.

https://www.yourmechanic.com/article/understanding-ford-service-indicator-lights-by-brent-minderler

 

[Plati]

The IOLM article is interesting. So for people who do extended idling , 3000 mile oil change intervals are advised. How appropriate!

 

[jwas1]

When starting my '07 when it is cold, well below freezing, the engine stays on high idle for three or four minutes before returning to a normal idle speed. Curious how many let the truck return to a normal idle before driving off. The only vehicles I remember with this long of a warm up had a carburetor. Wonder if this has to do with peoples differences in the cam phasers/chain problems.

 

[JExpedition07]

My 08 van with the 5.4 2v has a case of piston slap since about 10,000 miles ( now has 102,000 mi.) . If I don’t let it warm up it sounds like it’s gonna fly apart until the pistons swell and close the tolerances.

The 5.4L uses forged pistons, my understanding is that forged pistons are prone to cold piston slap despite being heavier duty.

GM LS motors get piston slap commonly, does not really hurt the engine in the long run but sounds like hell when cold.

 

[Motorcity muscle]

ExplorerTom is correct. It's essentially just making an educated guess.

https://www.yourmechanic.com/article/understanding-ford-service-indicator-lights-by-brent-minderler

Good article, now has me thinking about changing coolant with the aluminum heads. Is there a test for coolant or just replace at 100,000 M.

 

[ManUpOrShutUp]

Good article, now has me thinking about changing coolant with the aluminum heads. Is there a test for coolant or just replace at 100,000 M.

The specific gravity testers should be accurate as far as freeze protection. In terms of corrosion protection, I'm sure you could send it off to a lab, but I'm not aware of any simple method of testing.