Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Up until now ive been going out in the morning, setting the turbo timer to 9 minutes and letting the car warm up while I finished getting ready. I still wouldnt drive it hard when I left, but it allowed the engine temp to warm up a bit and allowed windows to de-mist if needed :blink:

I mainly notice my clutch bites really hard or isn't as smooth if I dont warm up the car first. Obviously, this is more of a case in winter, where it makes little difference in summer.

While this isn't a complete solution for warming the car up and I still drive it slowly to begin with until engine temp is right where it should be, is this actually bad for my car? Ive been doing this for over a year now almost daily. What problems would it cause if its bad?

Which all goes to prove that the engine won't warm up at idle, even after 9 minutes.

The problem is that when tye engine is cold, the ECU dumps a load of fuel in to keep the engine running. At idle, the spark plugs aren't at optimum temperature, so the spark isn't as good, and the fuel doesn't burn fully. The excess fuel washes oil from the cylinder walls, and may dilute the oil, thus reducing its lubricating ability.

You would all be aware that taxis run forever without an engine faulure. The reason is that basically the engine never gets cold. The greatest amount of damage is done to an engine while it is cold. So forget what Gillie and his old man say and do - just get in, turn on, and go.

There is another thread that discusses the pros and cons (mostly cons) of letting the engine idle to warm it up. The main point I can make here is that if you are warming up by idling, you are burning fuel but going nowhere. No wonder you have shite fuel economy!

Interesting, I've always warmed up my cars letting them idle for a few mins for a different reason. All the Auto's I've driven seem to shift smoother once the transmission oil has a bit of temperature in it. I've got a fairly expensive Auto tranny in the Pulsar so I give it a bit of respect.

  • 5 months later...

Sorry resurrect an old thread.

Although most of you say its better to start the car up leave it for a bit and then drive away not leaving it to idle in excess of 5 mins.

My question being how long do you let it idle before you take off?

Dezz stated he lets his idle for 30 seconds but does this very in different weather? eg 30 seconds for normal weather and 1 minute for cold weather?

Just an interesting topic :)

On a cold day I turn the car on and let it sit for about 2-3mins just to let the oil anf other fluids cycle then drive off boost for about 5 mins to warm everything up then you can hit boost.

Summer days I still let it sit for abit even tho the atmos temps are higher, the car still needs to warm up.

Only fluids that would warm up are your oil and water if your car is just sitting there. I have never let my car sit there idleing from a cold start for more than 30 seconds. I just jump in, turn on the engine, put on seat belt, tune in radio/cd and then start driving.

Things such as your gearbox and diff oil would still be cold, so in essence all warming up your car is the morning does is cause more wear to the engine than it should and burn petrol for no reason.

I've always just turned the key... ...Buzz the electric gate (which takes about a min to open)... ...Belt on... ...and off I go...

In winter I find that the heater will tell me when the car has warmed up... ...I turn it on and it stays on 1 fan until the system heats up and then it blasts on 4 fans... ...Usually by then I'm out onto the Hwy on my way to work...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Update 3: Hi all It's been a while. Quite a lot of things happened in the meantime, among other things the car is (almost) back together and ready to be started again. Things that I fixed or changed: Full turbo removal, fitting back the OEM turbo oil hardlines. Had to do quite a bit of research and parts shopping to get every last piece that I need and make it work with the GT2860 turbos, but it does work and is not hard to do. Proves that the previous owner(s) just did not want to. While I was there I set the preload for the wastegates to 0,9bar to hopefully make it easier for the tuner to hit the 370hp I need for the legal inspections that will follow later on. Boost can always go up if necessary. Fitted a AN10 line from the catch can to the intake hose to make the catchcan and hopefully the cam covers a slight vacuum to have less restrictive oil returns from the head and not have mud build up as harshly in the lines and catch can. Removed the entire front interior just shy of the dashboard itself to clean up some of the absolutely horrendous wiring, (hopefully) fix the bumpy tacho and put in LED bulbs while I was there. Also put in bulbs where there was none before, like the airbag one. I also used that chance to remove the LED rpm gauge on the steering column, which was also wired in absolute horror show fashion. Moved the 4in1 Prosport gauge from sitting in front of the OEM oil pressure gauge to the center console vents, I used a 3D printed vent piece to hold that gauge there. The HKB steering wheel boss was likely on incorrectly as I sometimes noticed the indicator reset being uneven for left vs. right. In the meantime also installed an airbag delete resistor, as one should. Installed Cube Speed premium short shifter. Feels pretty nice, hope it'll work great too when I actually get to drive. Also put on a fancy Dragon Ball shift knob, cause why not. My buddy was kind enough to weld the rust hole in the back, it was basically rusted through in the lowermost corner of the passenger side trunk area where the wheel arch, trunk panel and rear quarter all meet. Obviously there is still a lot of crustiness in various areas but as long as it's not rusted out I'll just treat and isolate the corrosion and pretend it's not there. Also had to put down a new ground wire for the rear subframe as the original one was BARELY there. Probably a bit controversial depending on who you ask about this... but I ended up just covering the crack in the side of the engine block, the one above the oil feed, with JB Weld. I used a generous amount and roughed up the whole area with a Dremel before, so I hope this will hold the coolant where it should be for the foreseeable future. Did a cam cover gasket job as the half moons were a bit leaky, and there too one could see the people who worked on this car before me were absolute tools. The same half moons were probably used like 3 times without even cleaning the old RTV off. Dremeled out the inside of the flange where the turbine housing mates onto the exhaust manifolds so the diameter matches, as the OEM exhaust manifolds are even narrower than the turbine housings as we all know. Even if this doesn't do much, I had them out anyways, so can't harm. Ideally one would port-match both the turbo and the manifold to the gasket size but I really didn't feel up to disassembling the turbine housings. Wrapped turbo outlet dumps in heat wrap band. Will do the frontpipe again as well as now the oil leak which promted me to tear apart half the engine in the first place is hopefully fixed. Fitted an ATI super damper to get rid of the worn old harmonic balancer. Surely one of the easiest and most worth to do mods. But torquing that ARP bolt to spec was a bitch without being able to lock the flywheel. Did some minor adjustments in the ECU tables to change some things I didn't like, like the launch control that was ALWAYS active. Treated rusty spots and surface corrosion on places I could get to and on many spots under the car, not pretty or ideal but good enough for now. Removed the N1 rear spats and the carbon surrounding for the tailpipe to put them back on with new adhesive as the old one was lifting in many spots, not pretty. Took out the passenger rear lamp housing... what do you know. Amateur work screwed me again here as they were glued in hard and removing it took a lot of force, so I broke one of the housing bolts off. And when removing the adhesive from the chassis the paint came right off too. Thankfully all the damaged area won't be visible later, but whoever did the very limited bodywork on this car needs to have their limbs chopped off piece by piece.   Quite a list if I do say so myself, but a lot of time was spent just discovering new shit that is wrong with the car and finding a solution or parts to fix it. My last problem that I now have the headache of dealing with is that the exhaust studs on the turbo outlets are M10x1.25 threaded, but the previous owner already put on regular M10 nuts so the threads are... weird. I only found this out the hard way. So now I will just try if I can in any way fit the front pipe regardless, if not I'll have to redo the studs with the turbos installed. Lesson learned for the future: Redo ALL studs you put your hands on, especially if they are old and the previous owners were inept maniacs. Thanks for reading if you did, will update when the engine runs again. Hope nothing breaks or leaks and I can do a test drive.
    • No those pads are DBA too  but they have colors too. I look at the and imo the green "street" are the best.
    • I’m not sure what happened I told them about sonic tunes free OTS tune and the next the I know .. I was booted..   To funny 
    • Yea - I mean I've seen my fuel pump which is decades old and uh, while I'm not saying this with real knowledge... but I sure get the ick at using anything in the fuel system that produced the state of that pump. Many years ago I went through multiple pumps (and strainers) before I dropped the tank to clean it out with extreme violence. I'm talking the car would do maybe 50km before coming to a halt, which resulted in me cleaning out the filter with some brake cleaner and going on my way. None of my stuff ever looked like what came out of your fuel tank. I don't think I'd be happy with it unless every single component was replaced (or at least checked/cleaned/confirmed to be clean here).
    • I'm not going to recommend an EBC pad. I don't like them. Just about anything else would suit me better. I've been using Intima pads for a while now.
×
×
  • Create New...