If turning your heater on full blast in 40F weather causes your temperature gauge to drop noticeably, have your car serviced.
Fleabag, it's called a thermostat. It causes the engine to warm up quickly, then opens to keep it cool. It varies it's opening to keep the coolant at the proper temp.
Now the trans is a different story.
um, pretty much everyone here is concerned with the remote start warming up the inside so we dont freeze our asses off.
the car will still be warmer(my malibu would reach engine operating temp via idlng, thank you very much) than if you JUST started it.
What's that? You can't imagine that the heater core in the car acts like the car's radiator? Yes that's right, when you run the heater, it's like you're opening the thermostat to a smaller radiator. Haven't you seen the problems associated with cars that have a stuck open thermostat? Usually one of the symptoms of a stuck open thermostat is.........the car never warming up!
Yeah, I can see where your priorities are..... :rollseyes; You're right, your engine's operating temp is probably going to be warmer than had you just started it up, however what will be different is that in this case, your car will have been idling at a very suboptimal temperature for a long time opposed to a short period of time had you just light drove the car around with the heater off as soon as you started it up.
Fleabag, when you start your car cold, the thermostat is closed to make the coolant warm up rapidly. The coolant is just recirculating in the engine block until it reaches the opening temp of the thermostat. Only then does the coolant get routed through the radiator.
You see Fleabag, the engineers already thought of the warm up time and how to speed it up.
Being a hotshot engineer yourself, I'm sure you just forgot.
The heater core is tiny compared to the radiator. If what you say is true, then you could keep the engine cool with the heater core alone. Well, you can't. The heater core does not significantly remove heat from the coolant.
Cars are sometimes deliberately run without thermostats. They take longer to warm up, but they do warm up to proper operating temps.
Yeah, I can see where your priorities are..... :rollseyes; You're right, your engine's operating temp is probably going to be warmer than had you just started it up, however what will be different is that in this case, your car will have been idling at a very suboptimal temperature for a long time opposed to a short period of time had you just lightly driven the car around with the heater off as soon as you started it up. My suggestion to you is to put the interior fan on recirculate, keep the heater off until the engine is nearly warmed up, THEN turn on the heater. I say nearly warmed up because there is some lee-way into how much the car has to be warmed up before it's safe to turn on the heater. In the case of one vehicle I drive, 160F is about where the car is producing its optimal fuel economy and air-fuel mixture while at temperatures lower than this, it is not. The car's thermostat opens at 180F and closes at 190F, leading me to believe that this is the car's optimal operating range.
We've already established the use of a thermostat, see my earlier posts.
Actually, the heater core is NOT always tiny compared to the radiator. In fact, if your car is over heating, one of the suggestions is to run the heater at full blast. You see some cars have electric fans, and those fans only come on when the car's temperature continues to rises despite the thermostat opening. So when you have the heater core in the car circulating hot fluid, the heat is going to be lost (as by design) and THEN when you have air flowing through that core, you've effectively got a car radiator, except this time it's radiating out into the interior of the car instead of the outside environment.
Anyways we're not talking about cooling down an engine when it's 80F outside, we're talking about when it's 40F or less and at those low temperatures, you can bet that the engine's thermostat is going to be closed most of the time especially if you're driving on the highway. (Ask me how I know)
Extended idling is bad for your carbecause the oil pump is not running at high enough pressure which is the reason why police cruisers are usually outfitted with modifications to facilitate extended idling periods. You can either choose to idle your car for a lengthy period of time, letting your car be in its unoptimal temperature range or you can choose to heat up your car very quickly by driving it lightly. If you can, try this for an experiment. In 40F weather with a smaller displacement engine (maybe around 2 litres?) get your car quickly warmed up, THEN try running the heater at full blast, then watch your temperature gauge drop. There are other anecdotes and stories not to mention MANUFACTURER RECOMMENDATIONS to support the idea that idling your vehicle to warm it up is a BAD IDEA.
Whose the idiot now?Nonsense. And learn the meaning of big words before using them.
anecdote: A short account of an interesting or humorous incident.
Idiot.
I dont run the heater when its doing that. I run the fan on defog and turn on the defrosters.
the air moving through the system is genearlly warm enough to do the trick anyways.
yeah my priorities are my comfort over the NEGLIGABLE chance of any permanant damage to the cars engine
you also seem to put loads of confidence in the BS car manufactures spew out.
The heater core's capacity to remove heat is tiny compared to the radiator. No question. Turning it on may slightly delay engine damage in an overheating situation, but that's about it.
If the engine's thermostat were closed most of the time at 40F ambient, the radiator would remain cold. There is no way that will be the case in a properly operating cooling system. Even at very cold temperatures, the radiator gets hot.
The cooling system keeps the engine coolant in a good temperature range. No way is there a radiator full of cold coolant on a cold day.
You are nucking futs.
I've manually started my car to idle it in the morning when it has been below 20 degrees, and it gets up to temperature within 20 minutes.
Theres nothing wrong with idling your car as long as it doesn't overheat. I've idled a government suburban in the desert for 12 hours before while running AC without any problems.
Extended idling is bad for your car because the oil pump is not running at high enough pressure which is the reason why police cruisers are usually outfitted with modifications to facilitate extended idling periods. You can either choose to idle your car for a lengthy period of time, letting your car be in its unoptimal temperature range or you can choose to heat up your car very quickly by driving it lightly.
When you do it everyday, NOTHING IS NEGLIGIBLE. Just ask those old people telling those damn kids to get off their lawn because the kids like to cut across it when heading on their way to school.
I think you seem to forget that a closed radiator doesn't mean that the engine doesn't have coolant inside. It's there, it's just not hot enough to warrant being circulated through the radiator.
When you do it everyday, NOTHING IS NEGLIGIBLE. Just ask those old people telling those damn kids to get off their lawn because the kids like to cut across it when heading on their way to school.
And you're 'nucking ignorant. What is so wrong about the radiator remaining cold (cold is relative) especially if the thermostat is closed? The radiator's job is to radiate excess heat. Who cares how hot it is so long as the engine doesn't overheat! There is a reason why we migrated from strictly air-cooled engines to water cooled, it's because air-cooled can't handle the additional heat from the more powerful engines.
I think you seem to forget that a closed radiator doesn't mean that the engine doesn't have coolant inside. It's there, it's just not hot enough to warrant being circulated through the radiator.
Your logic is seriously flawed.
The Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor has no modifications concerning the oil pump or oil pressure.
The modifciation for extended idling is to stop the vehicle from overheating when it idles. The modification is an oil to coolant heat exchanger to reduce oil temperatures. Without the heat exchanger, the engine would tend to run too hot during extended idling.
The engine and transmission are the same spec as the civilian vehicle. EDIT: the trans is modified for firmness of shift, though.
So much for idling not heating up the engine...
5 days a week for 5 minutes, 2 months out of the year, is not a big deal. Especially if you dont go tearing off like the car is at operating temp
cop cars do NOT idle high, I work on a fleet of 14 crown vics and a few assorted impala's, they idle at like, 1200 rpm's
also, most cars are set to idle high until when cold until the computer sees #'s it likes.
hell even my bike does that when its cold
The radiator's only purpose is to dissipate heat, if the engine is not overheating and is operating at its designed temperature, the temperature of the radiator is completely unimportant and irrelevant.
]You're not going to heat up your car by idling it. If you want to heat up your car, you actually have to drive it. [/B] In some areas (like Alaska), if it's actually cold enough to warrant using the remote start, then you'll NEVER get your vehicle up to operating temperature. In fact, if your vehicle is at operating temperature in these climates, there is a good chance that it will actually get colder and not be at operating temperature any more if you happen to idle the vehicle for an extended period of time.
Oh and for those douchebags who are working hard to discredit me entirely, it's in the owner's manual not to do extended idling and driving the car lightly is the best way to heat it up.
That's actually true for the VW TDI engine, turn it on and go, if you leave it sitting idle it wont warm up cause its so efficient or something