[s-cars] Wet Engine

[Brett Dikeman]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 5:35 PM,  <rbade12 at aol.com> wrote:
> I got's to know, how does idle from cold to get an engine hot differ from
> drive from cold to get the engine hot? It'd seem to me that the start is the
> real wear time, thereafter it doesn't much matter.    Bob

The most important (for many) wear area: cylinder walls and rings.
When your engine is under operating temperature, the cylinders are
small, and wear on the rings and cylinder walls is high.  The more
repetitions the engine undergoes below temperature, the more wear
occurs.  Engines warm up very quickly when driven; idling, they can
take forever...or never reach it at all.

Paraphrasing the owner's manual: "Get in, turn key, go.  Don't hoon it
until things are warmed up."

Another good reason to not let your car "warm up" by idling it
(unattended): if anything bad happens (like a coolant or oil leak),
you're only going to find out about it when you get outside and find a
smoking, dead car.

-B