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Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 17:46:14 -0800
From: Justin VanAbrahams <jvanabranopsamnet>
Subject: Re: Best method for morning warmup


Ilia Papas wrote: > > I know the manual says to drive the car right away from start, but it's > getting pretty cold in the morning. As the winter is moving in, the car > is sometimes at 20 degrees or colder. Is it bad for the engine to just > turn it on and leave it for 5 or 10 minutes? Also, while driving the > car with a cold engine, is it ok to drive it at high rpm's to warm it up > faster or should I just drive it under 3000? Thanks in advance. > > -Ilia > (if replying, remove 'nospam' from address) There are two reasons why Saab states that letting the car "warm up" excessively is not good. The first is for fuel efficiency... you get really bad gas mileage letting it sit there for so long. Here in the states that's not such a problem, but places where gas is expensive might see it otherwise. You should see some of BMW's manuals from the early '80s that have entire sections on why you shouldn't let the car warm up... ;) The second reason is oil pressure. The engine is designed to operate at a certain level of oil pressure. This pressure is directly related to heat - less heat means less pressure. By letting the car sit for a while at idle and warm up, you end up running the car much longer on low oil pressure than if you just started out driving right away, heating up the engine and getting to normal oil pressure faster. That said, your last comment is definitely dead on. On a turbocharged car you want to wait 30 seconds to a minute to get oil circulating through the turbo properly, then get going, but keep revs low. 3000 is the guideline I've always used, and IIRC the Saab manual states "to keep revs in the "ECON" area (i.e. 3000rpm) until the temp needle leaves the green area." Good advice. -Justin

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