The New Debate! To Warm Or Not To Warm Up Your Engine? Is It Really A Question, Or A Bunch Of Bunk?!

Greetings viewers, welcome back to the channel in today's video, the age old

debate

that happens every year at this time of year about whether or not to

warm

up

your

car before driving in the cold, today we will look at a news article. which I came across the other day on Facebook which made me laugh out loud let's look at the manufacturer's recommendations and we'll look at this logically and sensibly and try to put the bed once and for all or not to

warm

up

your

car before driving on winter, thank you all, it's cold and I mean, it's cold.

Right now I'm literally sitting astride a kerosene heater trying not to freeze, but let's start the video by looking at This article I saw the other day on Facebook saying not to heat up your car before driving in the winter. Now this was published on ABC 10. Let's see it. Yes, warming up your car before driving in cold weather can be harmful. the

engine

, yes that's what they claim here, excessive idling does nothing positive for the long term health of your

engine

s. Let's see this. I'm going to put it on the screen. I'm

really

going to read it. quick and then we're going to talk about some of the claims they're making here about why not warm up your car and why it's destroying your engine, so we're going to paraphrase and jump around a little bit.

I'm going to read this word by word. I'll leave a link to this article in the video description if you want to check it out for yourself, so with freezing temperatures here, it's common practice for many drivers to warm up their car before driving. a remote start feature, but briefly viewers want to know if they are causing potential damage to their engine, so they went to some sources and listed the sources here, Firestone Complete Auto Care Smart Motors Toyota in Madison, Wisconsin, the Department of Energy of the USA NAPA Auto Parts and Chuck's Auto Repair in Seattle Washington, so answer true yes, warming up your car before driving in cold weather could cause long-term engine damage.

It's ridiculous that most vehicles made after 1980 no longer need to be warmed up before driving, experts say. Driving after 30 seconds to a minute after starting the car is best practice, let's find out why they think you are going to destroy the engine by letting it warm up. It's true that warming up gasoline-powered vehicles before driving in cold weather can cause engine damage as quoted by Firestone Complete Auto Care and Smart Motors Toyota if you're one of the many drivers who thinks it's important to start your car. Firestone says leaving your car idling in cold temperatures can shorten the life of your engine by removing the oil in your engine pistons and cylinders, two critical components that help your engine run.

Gasoline-powered cars need oil to keep their engines lubricated when you start the car, an oil pump circulates the oil in less than a minute, but if you let the car idle to warm the cabin, the oil can disappear because apparently the oil pump is not constantly supplying pressurized oil to the engine, whether you are idling or driving down the highway or what the RPM is, keep this in mind. Chuck's Auto Repair explains the quote. Constantly idling a cold engine can be counterproductive because it gradually removes oil from the engine's pistons and cylinders. problem when the engine is cold the gas may not evaporate completely as it combines with air for newer cars with electronic fuel injection there are sensors that detect this and compensate by adding more gas to the mixture when there is excess fuel In the chamber part condenses on the cylinder walls and removes the lubricating oil when the lubricating oil runs out.

Components such as cylinder liners, piston rings will wear prematurely. quote quote again Less oil means more friction, more wear and a shorter life for your engine on quote Firestone says that while some people let their cars idle to warm up the interior, others may actually be trying to protect the engine due to a obsolete guide. Obsolete kids remember that Firestone is Smart Motors Toyota. They both say that most cars made before 1980 needed two quotes. warm up when it was cold outside this is because old cars had carburetors that regulated the air fuel mixture inside the engine and could not be adjusted for the air fuel ratio in the cold blah blah blah in cold temperatures , carburetors, blah blah blah blah, who cares again?

Carburetors from the 1980s, blah blah blah blah, so instead of waiting for the car to warm up in winter, most manufacturers recommend driving gently after 30 seconds because the engine warms up faster when the car is driven, according to the US Department of Energy quote, this means your cold day driving routine should look like this Rev your engine too high in the first few moments you start driving in the cold. This can add unwanted stress to your bearings and flood the combustion chamber with gas, which in turn will shave miles off the end of your engine's life.

Quote from Smart Motors Toyota now on the other hand, the rules for you, but not for me, for electric vehicle owners, you must include electric vehicles here that do not have a traditional engine. The above information does not apply according to the blog post on the NAPA Auto Parts website, instead Napa advises. Electric vehicle owners should warm up their car before unplugging it because it can help preserve battery range. Don't forget to use all the battery power to heat the cabin. Additionally, lithium batteries do not charge and discharge properly in the cold, among other issues, which plays a role in your electric car quote.

EVS must consume electricity to heat the interior. If you get into a car with a cold cabin and start driving, the vehicle must draw on stored electricity to bring up the interior air temperature. at a comfortable temperature, this will overload the electric vehicle's battery and leave you with less driving range, quote, Napa says, so there you have it guys, us fuel-injected gasoline-powered vehicles don't we can warm up our cars in winter, we have 30 seconds and then we have to start driving because we are going to destroy our engine because apparently the oil pump does not pump oil continuously and when it is idling your engine does not receive any oil and there is so much rich mixture of fuel that is simply running out.

All the oil in your engine is going to be completely stuck like a rock, but if you have an electric car, don't worry, let it warm up, plug it into the wall, use that electricity, get nice and warm before you take off. in the future, so let's analyze what we've read here, we'll go over the article again, we'll talk about Subaru, what they say in the owner's manual, we'll talk about the Subaru system and just think logically about how the mechanics of a combustion engine work internal works and stands up to cold weather so guys let's look at what we just read in that article and man they are

really

trying to scare some people who don't know much about their vehicle so the first point is to leave the engine idling cold. or let it get hot, the fuel will completely remove the oil from your cylinder and cause high friction and further wear on your pistons and cylinders, which is why they talk about the oil pump providing oil to the engine within 60 seconds of starting the engine. engine but then they make it seem like the oil pump just isn't working unless you are false driving, the oil pump constantly supplies 40-60 PSI of oil pressure every time the engine is running, it is mechanically connected to the engine.

It will explode oil while it's running, so it doesn't matter if you're idling at a thousand RPM or on the highway. 3000 RPM will still be squirting oil, pressurized engine oil into the camshaft, cylinder head, rotating assembly and The pistons, uh, what they were talking about with rich mixture fuel injected cars are much more accurate at measuring the amount of fuel they need to burn compared to old cars with carburetors that in the cold you had to suffocate them and you had to worry about everything. kind of problems getting it to run right and everything was mechanical and nothing fit uh completely different animal with the car fuel injector with a PCM and the IAT sensor and all these other sensors that precisely measure and add just the right amount of fuel to get it to run nice and idle in the cold until it warms up so it's not like the fuel injectors are spraying 10 tons of fuel here which gasoline is a solvent they're not spraying 10 tons of fuel there, it is not flushing the cylinders.

It's not flushing the cylinders, getting into the oil, diluting the oil, that's not something we would see, a lot of problems in the winter with engine failures with oil dilution, um, you know, all kinds of things that we don't see in the winter. Because it's not a real problem, in theory they took something and took it out of the water, so I think logically, one minute into the combustion process, the piston goes down, sucks in the air-fuel mixture, comes back up, is compressed, the spark plug fires. The recoil piston returning to the exhaust chord pushes the burned gases out of the exhaust valve well if you are spraying too much fuel there when the piston goes down for the intake charge and that air/fuel mixture is sucked in when the piston goes up. the backing is still being splashed and oil is supplied to lubricate the piston and cylinder.

I think they're getting a little confused here. I think they act like this is an old carbureted engine that just pours fuel like no, this is a computer controlled system with variable inputs that monitor the intake air temperature, the air/fuel mixture, all of this and yeah , when you first start up you're in an open circuit and have to close it when things come up to temperature, but it's not as bad as they make it. It sounds like in this article that I think they are trying to scare people a little here, so that seems to be their main argument that you are going to remove all the oil and lubricity from your piston and cylinder by letting your engine now idle. to warm up, what's the difference between idling it to warm up and driving it on the road?

That air-fuel mixture will be just as rich whether you're driving on the highway or idling cold before reaching closed-loop status. What's the point here? I don't understand exactly where they are going with this because the oil pump provides pressurized motor oil throughout the engine no matter what RPM it is running at as long as it is running and that rich fuel mixture is being removed. all the oil in your cylinders will happen whether you are letting the engine idle or running the engine while it is cold and not in the closed loop state, so there is no problem here, so that's the first thing I guess, The second thing is, uh, them.

You're trying to communicate with the environment and you're worried about pollution and you know you let it idle, but it doesn't matter if it idles cold to warm up or if you drive it cold to warm it up, it's still going to be an open circuit until it closes. loop when it gets to a desirable warm enough temperature, so again, if there's a minute or second difference between idling at that warm enough temperature or driving at that warm enough temperature, it's minimal, so again it's not really an issue , so it's funny they mention for the EV Owners who stay plugged in warm up their car until it's nice and toasty and feels nice inside before setting off, make sure not to use any of their precious power supply.

Reserve your battery to feel comfortable, but gasoline-powered vehicles. no, no, you freeze and watch your breath while driving down the road, you don't let the car warm up, you can't defrost the windows, yes, you got the ice off, but the feeling of the cotton fogged up the windows, no. You can't sit there until they are cleared, where you can drive safely and see why you are polluting and damaging your engine. you can't be warm and toasty when you leave you better have heated seats heated steering wheel because otherwise you're going to freeze so in itself it's ridiculous the way they phrase that about the electric vehicle versus the gasoline vehicle.

Electric vehicles are simply not good in the cold. Batteries don't like the cold. They don't like to charge when it's cold, they don't like to hold a charge when it's cold, and they don't discharge like they should when it's cold. There are many problems with these carsElectric when it comes to cold, but that's it. It is not what we are here to talk about, but rather what the manufacturer actually indicates. What does Subaru tell you to do with your vehicle? Do you need to warm it up? The answer is yes. Subaru wants you to warm up your vehicle before driving if you got into a modern Subaru, say 2011 2012 model year or newer, started the car and most likely saw the little blue temperature light, so think about it for a while. minute when that blue light comes on when you start your Subaru code for the first time.

Your RPM shoots up to about 1800, maybe 2000 RPM and stays there. Your engine is not just idling at 600, 800 RPM. Your engine is idling, so it heats up faster. That's when the blue light is on. It's at high idle, warming up the engine quickly. but for sure and Subaru states that when these RPMs are high and the blue light is on to leave the car in park or neutral with the parking brake on, if you have a manual transmission you should not drive it while it is in warm weather. procedure aboveuntil it has warmed up enough as they stay so there you go so in the article again I don't understand the whole idle thing the car is bad most modern fuel injected cars have a high idle while The engine is cold and the RPM will drop. once it's warm enough then it's not a big deal between leaving it idling or driving down the highway because it's still idling to warm up faster than if it were just sitting there idling while the engine is idling when you've already raised the throttle. temperature, which is normally between 500 and 800 to 1000 RPM depending on the engine brand and manufacturer.

Now that blue temperature light is an indicator that the engine is cold. That light will go off when the engine reaches a sufficient level of heat, as it says in the owner's email. that your engine should be warmed up, that the blue light will turn off when the engine is warm enough, and that you should not drive until the car reaches sufficient temperature, in the section of the owner's manual that talks about winter driving, in It actually says that while you are warming up your car after you have removed the ice, scrape the windshields to check the free movement of the brake pedal, pedal the accelerator, all that before you start, again in the owner's manual it says before driving and while you are warming up your car. car, so Subaru wants you to warm it up before driving, aside from the selfish reason of our personal comfort, why should we warm up our cars?

It all comes down to the mechanical side, now with your engine, your fluids need to be warm. They need to be warmed up before they start to flow well and protect and do what they should now, that's more in line with people seeing severe negative temperatures. Instead of if it's 32 degrees outside, your oil should flow as it should at that temperature. when you get the negatives down, uh like teens and 20's are negative, that's when you have some serious problems and you should be running a block heater, but you want your oils and transmission fluid, all of that warmed up before you start drive, you want your engine.

The coolant should reach between 100 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit before driving. It's just a good area that has warmed up enough before you start driving down the road and another thing with the engine warming up comes down to allergy to the mail. The engine blocks the pistons. In the crankshaft, the cylinder heads, all of this expands and contracts with temperatures, so you need to gradually bring them up to a stable temperature of about 120 degrees before you start driving, so where is most of the heat? on your engine, especially when cold when you first start? The starter is in the combustion chamber, if you let it run for 30 seconds and start accelerating down the road you will put hot spots in the cylinder heads, the cylinder heads will heat up faster than the block and faster than the crankshaft.

The rotating assembly, especially in a box or engine, you want to let everything gradually warm up and come back together at 120 degrees Fahrenheit is where you want to get to the minimum before you start driving, so with a Subaru it's not as big. deal because your engine block and cylinder heads are aluminum and both will expand and contract relatively at the same rate and by the same amount, but think about this for a minute, like on my Duramax diesel engine. I have a cast iron engine block and I have aluminum cylinder heads as cast iron reacts differently than aluminum to thermal expansion and contraction so it is actually wiser to warm up my diesel engine before warming up my Subaru engine because The Subaru engine has aluminum cylinder heads and an aluminum block and they will basically react the same way to temperature variations, while the Duramax Diesel with a cast iron block and aluminum heads, both different metals will react slightly differently. to temperature changes, so again, acclimating everything slowly as the temperature rises is better than just jumping in. and forcing a lot of hot spots around the cylinder heads and the pistons and, you know, it's not good for the car, so don't let your car sit idle to warm up because you're removing oil and you're going to destroy it. your engine is compared to letting it warm up for 30 seconds and then running down the road and putting hot spots in your combustion chambers, your cylinder heads and not letting the entire engine acclimate to the temperature change slowly, uh, you know it's perfectly fine, so again, it's a strange thought.

The strange logic in that article and the experts who weighed in are very strange, but again, I'm not an engineer so maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, maybe they got it right and I was wrong, but I was just thinking. Logically, or at least my logical definition of thinking, it seems that warming up the engine before driving is better for the engine than letting it run for 30 seconds to a minute and ending up hitting the road, but that's just my opinion, so guys , What do they do? Do you think let me know in the comments below?

Do you let your engine warm up? Don't you let your engine warm up? Why do you do it or why not? Do you think it's silly to let it get hot? Let me know in the comments below. Do you think it's silly not to let it heat up? Let me know in the comments below. Thank you all so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video. I'm about to go into the house and warm up because I'm freezing in here. I'm sure you've probably seen my breath. This video will probably be posted on Saturday or Sunday.

Sunday is Christmas Day. Saturday is Christmas Eve. So merry Christmas, happy holidays everyone, thank you all for the views of 2022 and we'll see. All of you in the next foreign video.