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Is Warming Your Car Up In Cold Mornings Good or Bad For Your Car?

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Is Warming Your Car Up In Cold Mornings Good or Bad For Your Car?

With the winter months setting in the Northern part of the globe, we here at ????? have decided to answer that dreaded question a lot of us ask in those cold winter mornings, "Should I let my car warm up or not?".
While most might think it's easier on your car to let it just run and gently warm up, it is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. Most importantly, it does indeed waste fuel.

A huge majority of cars on the road today use electronic fuel injection. When your car's engine is cold, the computer tells the fuel injectors to stay open longer, allowing more fuel into the engine to help it run cold. While the engine slowly warms up, the injectors let in less fuel and everything returns to normal.
The reality is, letting your car just sit and idle is the slowest way to bring it up to operating temperature because it's running at idle speed. This procedure also invites other problems. Keep in mind that modern cars are equipped with multitudes of devices to make them run clean, including catalytic converters, and a device in the exhaust system that burns off unburned hydrocarbons in the exhaust.

Is Warming Your Car Up In Cold Mornings Good or Bad For Your Car?

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Cold engines emit far higher percentages of unburned hydrocarbons than warm engines do. Sadly still, the average catalytic converter isn't able process 100% of unburned hydrocarbons, even at the best of times. Also, catalytic converters need higher exhaust temperatures to work properly.
Throw in a cold engine emitting a high percentage of unburned hydrocarbons, repeated thousands of times, and you may end up with a "plugged" converter.
Basically, the converter becomes overwhelmed and literally ceases to function. This will happen over long time, and the end effect is: poor mileage and much dirtier exhaust.
Your best bet? Even when it's 10 degrees outside, is to start your car, let it run for 30 to 60 seconds enough to get all the fluids running, and drive off gently. Your engine will warm up faster, your exhaust system will get up to temperature faster so the cars catalytic converter can do its job, and you'll use much less fuel. Which is what we all wanted all along?
If it's below zero degrees, it's good to give the engine five minutes or a bit less before you drive off into the frozen surroundings.

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Guestbook Comments

  • cory2081 Nov 8, 2011 @ 8:50 pm | delete
    Warming up a car is definitely a waste of fuel, although, if you want those windows free of snow or ice you'll have to scrape them rather than letting the car warm up and melt it away. I've never understood why cars don't have a heating element that would provide heat instantly until the engine warms up for this.
  • desa999 Nov 8, 2011 @ 5:24 am | delete
    Most experts I've come across suggest not to warm the engine up for any long periods, its better to get it moving.
  • autofanatic Nov 7, 2011 @ 10:01 am | delete
    Smart information, Brian. I used to live next to a fool who warmed his engine every morning by revving it up and down for 3-4 minutes. It drove me nuts! Thirty seconds of letting the oil flow is more than enough to put it in reverse, back out of the driveway and get on the road.
  • staymor Nov 5, 2011 @ 10:35 pm | delete
    Informative lens and good to know.
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briangilman74

I'm Brian Gilman, and I work for OOYYO Used Cars Search Engine. OOYYO Network is the global vertical search platform for used cars and new cars. OOYYO... more »

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