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Warming up your car before driving in cold weather can damage the engine (2016)

businessinsider.com

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Re: Warming up your car before driving in cold weather can damage the engine (2016)

#4

Post by dang »

LadyCailin wrote: post #3

Very little information in this “article”.

Ok, we've changed the url https://www.fleetmanagementweekly.com/yes-warming-up-your-ca... to the thing it points to, which is longer if not better.

Edit: ok, that one (https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/weather-verif...) didn't work. Switching to the URL suggested in the comments below. Thanks!

Re: Warming up your car before driving in cold weather can damage the engine (2016)

#5

Post by rolph »

here in alaska we use block heaters as a must have.

Cold oil doesnt recirculate very well, of course a chronicaly cold engine, with cold oil, is going to display excessive wear.

so, why "warmup" a vehicle?

two parts...

1] old model vehicles dont have digital engine control its electromechanical.

cold carburetors run out of tune, unless you have auto choke and idle tuning. so the block needs to be warm for efficiency and normal function.

2] it gets cold in the cabin of a alaskan vehicle no matter what make/model, as in deep negatives and hoar frost all over. most humans dont do well in this, and have to warmup the cabin to function outside of hypothermia. this is afew levels beyond scraping frost of a window.

Re: Warming up your car before driving in cold weather can damage the engine (2016)

#6

Post by sschueller »

"peratures can shorten the life of your engine by stripping away oil from the engine’s pistons and cylinders — two critical components that help your engine run."

Nonsense, if the oil pump and engine are built correctly and working as intended this does not cause librication not to work correctly. How many cabs would die early because they are idling in traffic all day? Your personal cars engine is not a formula one cars engine that survives one weekend of driving.

Re: Warming up your car before driving in cold weather can damage the engine (2016)

#7

Post by aidos »

This feels a bit shallow. According to this website, another website says that warming your car in cold weather before driving can cause damage due to stripping oil from the piston.

I’m willing to believe it but I’d like to hear some details. Surely the engine is going to warm to the same temperature soon enough?

Re: Warming up your car before driving in cold weather can damage the engine (2016)

#8

Post by michaelteter »

Yet another closed access post on HN. My last complaint about this got flagged, but I really don't care. The HN community needs to stand behind open internet, not contribute to an increasingly closed one.

"Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/weather-verify..." on this server.

Reference #18.6dc31302.1671993353.baa1f4a "

Re: Warming up your car before driving in cold weather can damage the engine (2016)

#9

Post by psychphysic »

For me the benefits far outweigh the increased wear on the engine.

I don't really need my engine to last 400k miles like it can in perfect circumstances.

I need fog free windows, be comfortable driving the car without gloves on making the steering slip. To be able to focus on getting around and not shivering.

I don't drive these days but back when I did those were all issues I had for my 5am start getting to work. And far more a concern to me than the engine losing some longevity (which I could make up for just by proper care few people do anyways).

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