Gas Prices Going Up

OK been gone for a day, and wow this thread has some interesting points.

1. No, put a cover on your radiator. Use the heat from the engine to heat your car, it will still get cold air for better combustion you want to get the longest life out of your rig to maximize the “Carbon foot print”. Also double duty if you find your car not moving, you still have a way to keep warm.
2. Works great if you are driving in no traffic and no hills.
3. Might work, but comfort is the name of the game on long commutes. If you are comfy you are most likely to work on getting better MPG.
4. Again great if your not looking at longer commutes in bad weather or during winter.
5. If there is someone going your way it is a great idea. Not so much if you are going counter to traffic, or have an off hour work schedule.
6. Turn off the engine while in traffic waiting for a light to change? It works if your car does it automatically, if not you are just putting a huge amount of stress on your starter, and shortening the life span of the starter. Also it may work for an automatic car, some of us still drive manual transmission.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a summer car that gets 40~ish MPG, and I have a winter rig that gets 20-24. In the summer my little commuter is a great car and I only have to dodge other drivers and Moose. The winter is a different story. 16 inches of snow over night is not unheard of. I have yet to see a electric or hybrid deal with 6 inches of snow. AWD or 4WD are needed for winter. Icy roads and temps that drop in to the –20 deg F are also common.

Like one of the members from Aus said a page or 2 back. Electric are great if you live in a city, have chargers ready at a decent interval and live in a mild climate.

About 6, I did not specify if you were parked or not.

Shutting off your engine after 2 minutes is when you are parked.

How is #1 gonna help unless you have a heater that runs on gas or diesel??

Those are extremely uncommon around here.

I don’t think so. The engine is going to be running anyhow and a running engine produces a lot of heat. I seriously doubt you would be able to measure any difference as if when driving you used electric heating that power has to be replaced by the alternator which does not work for free.

#6…. I once rented a car that shut off and restarted itself in traffic. My first thought was whether or not the fuel savings was truly going to offset the likely shorter starter motor life. Manufacturers are sort of forced into coming up with some of these fuel-saving ideas to get their CAFE ratings as high as possible. Some manufacturers who sell a lot of bigger no-so-efficient vehicles have to try harder. I do not believe they factor in any extra wear that will occur on other components. As long as I have choices I will never buy one of these vehicles with the auto stop-start “feature”.

These saving techniques reminds me when I use to drive stick. Early on, being a dirt poor student, I made it a habit of coasting and then, it became it became a reflex. Any light or downhill was in neutral. Then on to automatics and before, I was always afraid I hit reverse in a mechanical link, in my current daily driver, it’s fully electronic so there is no such thing as accidentally putting it in reverse, so, I occasionally resort to my old habits.

It’s kind of cool to watch the fuel consumption run over .7 liters per 100Km (400 mpg) on long down hills.

BTW……just to plug Benz diesels…….on relatively flat terrain , I’m running 5.1L/100km at 120 km/hr. Or 55 mpg at 75 mph. It’s my sweet spot between speed and economy.

@MtnDon and teacher, by electric car heater, I meant an external engine heater.

Here in Quebec, we call them “chauffe-moteur”, which plugs into a special outlet to directly heat the engine and car up.

The reason for this is because it saves a non-negligible amount of gas if you let it run for 30 mins before using the car.

The energy expenditure of the engine block heater is much lower than the cost of gas preheating the car, and is more environmentally friendly.

It therefore costs less.

@MtnDon, that seems very dangerous. Just shifting to neutral during traffic is necessary.

Shutting off the motor should only be used when parked for more than 2 mins.

Numbers 4 & 5 are the only things from this list that will cause a significant reduction in fuel cost.

  1. will do absolutely nothing, ’unless’ your vehicle heater happens to run off the fuel in your tank. Some do, but not many. ( ’Block Heater’…. those are good. Saves wear and tear associated with starting a cold engine in extremely cold temperatures. Would probably save a tiny bit of fuel also.
    The real benefit is reduced wear & tear on engine components due to extremely cold starts. :+1:
  1. will save some. Best use Cruise Control to accomplish this. :+1:
  1. might save some. But not worth it in the humid South. :frowning:
  1. will save fuel cost. :+1:
  2. will save fuel cost. :+1: :+1:
  1. will save, BUT is only practical if really very long idle times are anticipated. Otherwise wear & tear on other components overshadow any potential fuel savings.

Same here, unless it uses an integrated started/alternator/flywheel, not discrete parts.

These can be considered mild hybrids, as they can not only start the engine but also get the car moving out of the hole, use regenerative braking to help charge the battery (very very lightly, though!), and won’t have all the wear of belts and gears and all that rot.

Theoretically, you can power the alternator as a motor to use that as a starter (via the belt), and not have all the associated wear of solenoids, gears, etc. with an otherwise exposed flywheel. It’s electrically switched, not mechanically.

Plus, cold-cranking is vastly different from hot cranking. Even on the coldest days, my old deceased Cavalier could take 2-3 seconds to crank. Once it’s been started, though, and not even fully up to temp, a very quick bap on the keyswitch would start it right up. Literally, not even a full second.

Now, I’d like to see reliability figures of those integrated parts, because it ain’t like a parking-lot fix to swap out an alternator, but a major job to essentially swap out the flywheel. They had damned well better last the life of the engine/tranny.

OK, that was not clear. Block heaters, as we called them when I lived in Manitoba, are great They warm the coolant and thus the engine unit and make starting easier as well as making heat availbale much sooner. But there is no need tolet an engine idle any more than 30 seconds before driving away. That is especially true with modern fuel injected engines. The computer adjusts the fuel mix to be rich enough to run smoothly. If the engine runs, drive. But of course drive gently until the egine is warm. The engine will warm up more quickly when driving than when idling.

We used to have an interior car heater that was timer controlled. It wouldc ome on before it was time to leave so the interior was warmed, the seats thawed out. That was before cars had heated seats.

I have start-stop and it has to be the dumbest, stupidest, craziest idea EVER. In whose world is starting and stopping a combustion engine a good idea? I bet the engineers where cursing when forced to do it for “environmental” reasons.

The upside it has a kill switch, so now, I start the car and push the kill switch……just a two step annoyance.

I never knew that. Thanks. I used to think nothing of pulling a transmission when I was much younger. I had and still have most of the required tools, tranny jack, etc. But I really have no desire to get that far into my cars any more.

Yes, the rental I had did have a kill switch. I have heard, but not confirmed, that some USmakes do not offer the switch or that it is well hidden.

The “only” time I let the car run is to make sure I have full oil recirculation. About 10 seconds cold. About 3-4 seconds hot. BUT, I will not push the engine for at least 5 minutes until the oil is warmed up.

In my car, you MUST run 0-30 weight synthetic all year. The reason is that the oil must be light enough to start circulating as fast as possible, particularly in the start-stop engines.

The days of running 30 weight oils in colder weather and waiting for them to heat up so they circulate faster is gone….at least in modern engines. In my old cars, I use to wait 30-60 seconds for the oil pressure to DROP because on start up. it pegged the oil pressure meter and one would get oil starvation because thick oil does not circulate fast enough. It was also “go slow” for several minutes.

Worse, you can’t bypass it. Even if I wire it “on” all the time. Believe me, I already tried. It has to detect a momentary contact.

You have to rewrite the engine software code, which is really ONE lousy line where it comes in over a certain temperature. Just raise it to a silly level. Easy-peasy…….but then, there goes any engine warrantee.

Bahhhh……push…push…go.

Yep, our Honda specs 0W-20 full synthetic.

Oh…. ‘Block Heater’…. those are good. Saves wear and tear associated with starting a cold engine in extremely cold temperatures. :+1:

Bah. Simple optocoupler across the switch contacts (mind the polarity), gets power once the accessory circuit goes live, simple one-shot delay in-between.

Eg, it gets power, times out after 30sec, sends a 1sec pulse to the optocoupler after. 2 halves of a 74HC123 should do.

Is that before or after I replace the dilithium crystal?

I’m not good enough to fool around with the cars electrics.

After. Just give that recipe to a nearby boffin to do the work for you.

The whole idea is that the optocoupler doesn’t change the operation of the switch at all. Just acts in parallel with it, and the original switch still works as advertised.

Neighbor has a newer Ford Truck with that wacky Start/Stop engine BS, BUT if you plug one of those trailer test connector thingy’s on the trailer hook up it bypasses the BS. Guess what he does?
Any good engine builder will tell you most of the bearing wear occurs during start up, why would you want to accelerate that cycle?
Foolish.
All this start/stop and 10 speed transmissions are just to make the silly New Car Fuel Sticker have a bigger number, nothing more.
Meanwhile trannys are failing early because of this unneeded technology. And we customers pay for the repairs.

As far as warm up procedures, it pizzes me off when every year at the beginning of winter the local news says some “automotive expert” says do not warm your car one bit, just start and drive the engine doesn’t care.
Maybe, maybe not, but the power steering pump and the transmission may “care”
Trannys make some weird shifts when cold and as the tranny lines run through the radiator, warming the engine warms the tranny before it get slammed into use.

Nothing likes to be moved/operated when stone cold, just ask most women.

I warm up all my vehicles when below 20 degrees and have yet to replace a transmission and do rack up a lot of miles each and every year.
Your repair bills may vary :slight_smile:

Later,
Warmed up Keith