Remote starters and their purpose.....
 

One of my freinds just invested in a remote starter for a 92 mazda protege. I told him that the engine does not warm up by sitting there and idling, it warms up much faster by driving the car. I dont see the purpose then in these remote starts? I think it is more harmful to the engine by letting it sit there idiling and also wastes gas.


Whats everyones opinion on this?

We have a remote start in the 'ol Mazda, more for convience than saving the engine.

There is one very good purpose for thsese devices. When having to park in very cold environments where a electrical plug-in for your block heater is not available, then units that use a cold-temp sensor can start your vehicle below certain ambient temps, and runt he car/truck for a specificed time, shut it down, and wait.

This can mean the difference between start/no start in tough situations. Very common use for rig workers, pipeline workers, etc.

And yes, driving it warms the engine must faster.

Wouldnt warming up by driving defeat the purpose of warming up in the first place? I thought the point is to allow the oil to reach the optimal tempereature before revving/putting any load on the engine.

I live in Florida and have no real need of a remote starter. But I grew up in Missouri, and we used to get freezing rain, which resulted in as much as an inch of ice on the windshield.

The car is undriveable until you can see out the windshield. I recently sent my sister a remote starter (which also serves to unlick doors and such) because she has no garage and tells me that sometimes it takes 15 minuets of scraping to get the ice iff the windshield. Her locks get frozen as well.
If she could start the car and let it run for 20 minutes, the ice will slide right off and the locks will unfreeze, and of course, you can open the car without the key.

The thing cost $70 plus shipping from JC Whitney near Chicago, they sell mail order, and comes with a video on how to install it.
She knows lots of mechanics so I don't think this will be a problem.

Well I let the 126 run for about 2-5 minutes then drive off slowly. I only let it run longer if I leave it outside and it snows, so while I clean the car off it idles.

My coolant temperature doesn't come up to temp when it's -5F out. You really have to drive it a bit. I don't have remote start, so I just let it run a bit and drive it around the block a coupla times before really going anywhere.

Kuan

yes sometimes when its really cold I drive around some sidestreets before getting onto the freeway.

I was listening to "Car Talk" on NPR one day and they were advising this woman who bought a car which would start on its own at certain times of the day (like at dawn). They determined that there was a remote starter installed but what followed was hilarious. I was laughing so hard because they said it was probably stray emissions or garage door signals and that she should just have the thing disconnected. I knew that the new starters have all sorts of fancy programmable features - it was probably one of the features that John described.

James Bond uses the remote starter facility on his BMW 750i in Tomorrow Never Dies after he steals the GPS encoder from Elliot Carver's printing factory. Obviously, if you're in the espionage game, this is a must have. ;)

I agree. The point is to warm up the engine a bit before you drive it so that there's minimal wear/tear of engine when the oil's still not regulated enough in below freezing tempratures.
Remote start does just that, but with the comfort of you being inside the house instead of freezing yourself on the ice-cold leather seats with no heat for the first 5 mintues :)

It's also helpful to idle for a few minutes if you are going to begin driving immediately at speeds in excess of 55mph. When I leave the seminary, the main road is a highway with a lot of traffic that is 55mph+. I tried driving once immediately after starting, and one cannot travel safely at high speeds while the engine is still cold. If I start and warm the car up for at least 5 minutes, it's much better. I love my remote starter.

Hmmm. What happened? I always thought that it was fine to get a car up to highway speed while it was still running cold, as long as you didn't really hammer it (ie: full throttle or close to it) when you were trying to get up to speed.

I've driven 70 mph on a cold engine before (after going skiing while the car was parked the whole day). The car didn't give any external clues that it was being abused, and still hasn't to this day.

-Sam

Hi Sam:

Thanks for your message. Your words "hammer it" tell the whole story! :) I could very easily ease up to 65-70mph without a problem, but when the two-lane highway is a busy one, one fears for their life if one leaves the starting block limping up to highway speed! I've met lots of good people here in Illinois, but the way people drive around here ... makes me hold onto the steering wheel with two hands!

Take care-
Michael.