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Warming up the car?

Lisa Miles

I read an article via E&T magazine the other day about the carbon cost of 'warming up the car' on winter mornings before driving off and wondered how many people still do such a thing? 

I remember in the 1970's some of our neighbours would always have their car idling for a while and vaguely remember them saying something about getting the oil circulating around the engine first before driving off. But as far as I'm aware, there is absolutely no need to do that nowadays with modern cars, if it was ever needed before anyway! The manual of my own car specifically states that it should not be started and left in an idling state but should be driven as soon as the engine is on.

Warming up the interior of my own car on a winter's morning consists of me making sure the heated seat is on (which can be felt around 2 minutes into the journey Relieved) although one thing I struggle with on occasion is de-misting the windscreen which can take longer. However I bought myself a telescopic handled de-mister pad that I wipe over the inside before I switch on the ignition.

Out of interest is it (or was it ever) necessary to idle a car before driving off? Were my 1970's neighbours correct? Thinking 

  any tips from the experts in the Automotive and road transport systems Network? 

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  • 0

    certainly before fuel injection was a thing and we wereall much more adept at modulating the mixture with a combination of juggling of choke settings and throttle blipping, a lot of cars were likely to stall and not restart when cold, or at lesat require several pulls with varying settings.  A less jumpy journey ensued if it was all warmed up. Also the older engine oils (Duckhams 20W50 comes to mind) went quite treacly at low temps, so getting it thinned down a bit was wise. On older cars the oil tended to start to drip past the seals once runny and up to temperature, so you needed to be on your way before that or be prepared to clean up. At one point I had a car with a tray of sand under it for this reason ;-)
    Mike

  • 0 in reply to mapj1

    I've only ever owned 4 cars in my lifetime as I tend to keep them going for a very long time. My current one is now over 20 years old but to me is still relatively modern Joy But yes my first two cars had a choke that had to be juggled to get it just at the right setting to get the car going but not flood it! 

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  • 0 in reply to mapj1

    I've only ever owned 4 cars in my lifetime as I tend to keep them going for a very long time. My current one is now over 20 years old but to me is still relatively modern Joy But yes my first two cars had a choke that had to be juggled to get it just at the right setting to get the car going but not flood it! 

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  • 0 in reply to Lisa Miles

    Choke? Luxury, you were lucky t'have choke. I had a Mk III Escort with an automatic choke. If it didn't start first time best thing to do was go back inside and have a cup of tea while it sorted it self out. I quickly replaced it with a manual choke convertor kit, the guy at the Ford dealers said "we sell a lot of these..."

    I used to have a different issue (given we live somewhere very damp) where on winter's mornings, if I hadn't had the engine and heater running to warm the windscreen up, the damp air would hit the windscreen and condense / freeze just at the point at the end of the road where I headed South East into the sun. I solved that one by taking a job where I worked from home!

  • 0 in reply to Andy Millar

    no need for conversion to a manual choke. My first car was a beetle with a Solex carb and auto-choke which didn't work. Instead of all the effort of converting to manual or repairing it, I used to carry a bottle of petrol and empty on capful of petrol through the air filter for cold -starting!

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