Warming Your Car in
Winter Can Burn a Hole in Your Pocket
By
Scott Siegel
http://www.beatthegaspump.com
Winter can be a difficult time for car owners. Winter does
it's best to wreak havoc on your fuel economy. You may be an
unwitting ally in hurting your fuel economy. How your car
warms up in cold weather could burn a hole in your pocket.
The first thing you need to do in cold weather get out of
the habit of letting your car warm up when you start it. Old
cars may have needed some warm up time, today's cars don't.
Many drivers idle their car for 5 to 10 minutes in the
winter to let their cars warm up. You should not let your
car idle for more than 30 seconds. You need no more than 30
seconds of idling to circulate the engine oil before you can
drive away on cold days
When you idle your car to warm it up you are burning gas but
not going anywhere. When you let that happen you are getting
zero miles per gallon. You may think that idling your car
for few minutes or so is no big deal, think again.
To give yourself an idea about how much gas you would be
burning by just letting your car idle for 5 minutes each
time you start it think about this. Assume you idle for 5
minutes when you start your car in the morning. Assume you
idle for 5 minutes again, sometime during the day when you
start your car again to drive home.
That would be idling your car for 10 minutes per day. If we
consider winter to be November, December, January and
February, then winter would be considered to be 120 days
long. If you idle your car for 10 minutes a day for 120 days
that amounts to 1200 minutes of idling.
1200 Minutes of idling is equal to 20 hours. That means that
by warming your car up by idling for only 5 minutes amounts
to letting your car sit and idle, burning gas and going
nowhere, for 20 hours. Would you ever let you car sit and
idle for 20 hours? Of course not. Then why would you idle
for the equivalent of 20 hours warming your car up if you
don't have to?
Warm your car up by driving it. To operate efficiently your
car needs to warm up other parts in addition to the engine.
Tires, transmission, wheel bearings and other moving parts
also need to warm up. Your car's catalytic converter doesn't
function at its peak until it reaches between 400°C and
800°C. The only way these other parts warm up is by driving.
The reality is, to warm your car up completely you have to
drive it anyway.
To save gas and increase gas mileage in the winter one of
the simplest things you can do is warm your car by driving
it, not by idling. Not only will it save you gas and money
but you will also be doing something positive for the
environment. That warm car will stop burning a hole in your
pocket.
===========================================================
Scott Siegel is the author of a 143 page manual of industry insider information
on saving gas and money at the pump (beatthegaspump.com). Visit us to learn how
you can get better gas mileage.
Find out how to improve gas
mileage.
===========================================================
