Quote:
Originally Posted by 300Drestoration
My work is about a 15 minute drive, and is the most common trip i take. But i let the car warm up for around 5 minutes first usually. I have found that makes a difference in it's immediate performance. If i drive the thing straight away, it's more sluggish. Needless to say, when the car's been driven for a while it is a world of difference hitting the pedal from stop.
Hopefully this work commute trek done twice a day is not going to hurt my battery over time. I suppose i could add around 5 minutes of nonsense driving each time.
Here's another thing that i frequently do though.. go to a Home Depot / Shopping plaza about 15 minute drive away, park the car for 20 minutes, and get back in and drive back. Does the benefit of a total of 30 minutes drive lose it's luster on the battery when i break it up with 20 minutes parked in a lot?
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Your driving habits aren't much different from most people's. My work is 7 minutes from my house. I'm certainly not going to drive an extra 23 minutes just to warm the car up, I'm not crazy! I do take the car to run errands and such a few times a week and occasionally take it out on the highway to keep the engine exercised. It's important to run the engine long enough to ensure that ALL of the fluids (oil included) reach operating temperature on a routine basis to drive off moisture and to allow the engine to operate at full temperature. The engine oil temperature will lag behind the coolant temperature, so don't be fooled into thinking that everything is at operating temperature just because the water jacket is. With 7-8 quarts of oil running around inside the engine, it'll take a while after the water jacket reaches temp for the oil to reach temp.
If the car is sluggish when cold, consider changing to a 5W-40 synthetic oil, it'll help in colder weather since it'll be thinner when cold and the synthetics are "slippery" in general. All IDI diesels will be a little grumpy when cold since the fuel isn't vaporizing properly in the prechambers. 5 minutes is a little long to idle in the morning, you might consider shortening it up to 2-3 minutes then just drive the car. Don't rev it hard until the temperature comes up on the gauge and you'll be fine. Look into your local ordinances regarding idling vehicles, some northern states have laws against it.