Engine Warm-Up Myths || EXPLAINED

here's a highly debated question should you lay your engine idle and warm up before driving your car like I wouldn't want to jump in my car on a cold morning and just send it I don't think my car would want that either so in this video I'm going to talk about if when and why you should let your engine idle and warm up before you go for a drive this is MZ let's get warmed [Music] up now people come up with or have a lot of reasons to let their engine idle after startup and listen a lot of them are legitimate reasons to getting your engine nice and toasty before driving your car but honestly most of them don't apply anymore they're kind of outdated even when it's super cold out but let's go through some of them to see which ones actually make sense the first valid but outdated explanation is that vaporized gas condenses on cool engine parts you know when you pour some ice water in a glass and you get condensation on the glass within minutes that's just the the water vapor in the air it cools down when it comes into contact with the cold glass forming liquid drops of water the same exact thing is happening with your fuel in the intake tracks piston crown and cylinder walls except that it happens much easier with gasoline and the surfaces don't have to be as cold this means there would be less fuel Vapor available for combustion which could lean out the air fuel mixture causing the engine to run a bit rough now like I said this is valid but only for cars that have a carburetor with a manual choke cars today are smart they have ecus and a whole bunch of sensors everywhere that monitor engine temperatures and all sorts of things that help it manage fuel on cold startups the ECU adds more fuel to compensate and even adjust ignition timing to make sure the engine runs nice and crisp right off the bat some engines even have direct injection which almost completely takes care of that issue so as far as proper running is concerned there's no need to warm up a fuel injected engine or run is fine next argument is oil flow you probably heard someone say that you have to let your engine oil come up to temperature because when it's cold it's not going to flow properly and it's more viscous and it's thicker that's valid completely true if your engine oil is from the 1950s modern engine oils are multi-grade oils for that specific reason let's say you use a 5W30 for your engine oil the first number is the winter grade which specifies a viscosity in lower temperatures in this case it's just five that's pretty low the second number after the W is the non-winter or the viscosity at operating temperatures which is 30 in this case that means the oil has pretty much the same viscosity or thickness in a big range of temperatures like look at the temperature range for this 5W30 Beyond this point I'm not getting out of the house let alone go for a drive and if he gets to here I'm done I'm moving to Australia so oil flow not a valid reason but oil pressure that's a valid reason cuz you do in fact want the oil pressure to build up and get distributed throughout the engine so that all the components and everything is all lubricated luckily though that happens very quickly how quick well the car lets you know when the oil or the check engine light goes off on the dash right after when you start the car Let's test it in real time it takes that long and you just put it in gear and start driving at this point no need to let it idle at all this way you start warming up the rest of your drivetrain as well like the transmission the diff the Tires and Brakes get warm just idling your car doesn't do any of that and you're getting zero miles per gallon however this doesn't mean that you should get out there and immediately do a fat pole bouncing off the rev limiter doing a bunch of hot boy [Music] stuff you know who you are that's because when things get hot they expand they get bigger and there's a long list of critical tolerances that don't come into spec until all the components have gotten nice and hot and expanded to their intended Di Dimensions if you've ever built an engine before you know exactly how tight and precise these tolerances are like clearances between your rocker arms cams and valves and lots of other parts like we're talking 0.03 mm between the cylinder wall and the Piston that's as thin as a human hair so if you get in the car and immediately just start hammering the engine you have all these engine components just flaming around at less than ideal clearances this will likely cause some accelerated wear on these components and your so in summary unless your engine is carburet and it has a manual choke or you've somehow managed to find oil from the 1950s and decided to put it in your engine questionable thing to do but whatever it's your car do whatever the you don't need to let your car idle before you start driving it just keep it at moderate RPMs until everything comes up to operating temperatures and then you can give it the beans now having said all that I know for a fact that we all have our own warm-up routines tell me if I'm wrong mine is to wait after start start up till the RPMs drop then Drive slowly at lower RPMs till the cooling temp is at operating temperature from the middle if I have an oil temp gauge even better I wait till that thing's closer to the middle too then I fully get on it do I have any proven science behind it absolutely not but it's my warm-up routine but I'm super curious to see what your warm-up routine is so let me know down in the comments but that's it for this video like the video if you found it useful you if you learned something new dislike if you didn't like the video that will show me subscribe if you haven't already and thanks for [Music] watching

Channel: MZopyrus

Views: 18,448

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Id: CMfcCxqkFNg

Length: 5min 46sec (346 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 03 2023