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Experts weigh in: Do you need to warm up your car in cold weather?

Experts weigh in: Do you need to warm up your car in cold weather?

It’s advice you’ve heard from your parents, coworkers and friends: You need to warm up your car before driving when it’s cold outside.

But is that indeed true?

Most vehicles built before one thousand nine hundred ninety five used a carburetor, a device that combined air and fuel. However, the U.S. automobile industry switched over to a fuel injection method in the 80s and 90s, eliminating the need for the carburetor.

With a carburetor, it was essential to let the car idle for minutes before driving it in order to make sure the engine would run decently. But with modern cars, it’s not the engine itself that needs to be heated up when it’s cold outside.

Experts are ripped on this issue. Some say the car can be driven instantaneously, just at a neighborhood speed. Others argue that cars need to idle for a duo of minutes to get the oil decently flowing.

(Top Photo/Flickr Photo/Phil Long)(Bottom Photo/Flickr Photo/La Sequencia)

“The oil is the lifeblood of the engine,” Joseph Henmueller, president and COO of Automotive Maintenance and Repair Association, said.

Henmueller suggested that cars should idle one to two minutes before driving in cold weather. When temperatures drop to freezing, or when it’s cold enough that windshields will frost over, the oil needs to warm up before it can budge sleekly via the car.

“Fluids get thicker when it is cold, so to lubricate decently they need sixty to one hundred twenty seconds of the engine running,” he said.

Without decently letting the engine run, Henmueller said, you may be cutting your engine’s life brief.

Experts at Penzoil have a different theory.

Technical Advisor Shanna Simmons said it is a myth that engines need to idle on a cold winter day.

“While it does take longer for motor oil to pump in extreme cold temperatures, we are talking milliseconds, not minutes,” she said. “Your engine will warm up the oil much quicker when driving at total speed — not to mention idling wastes gas.”

The Environmental Protection Agency lines up with those who say heating up your car is not only not helpful but is wasteful.

Both the EPA and Energy.gov say a car should not idle for more than thirty seconds at a time. Not only is it more environmentally friendly, but also cost-effective. Idling for thirty seconds actually uses more fuel than restarting the car.

In major cities, officials restrict how long the average driver can idle his/her car. Minneapolis, for example, thresholds the length of idling to three minutes, barring some exceptions (when it is below zero degrees Fahrenheit or higher than 90, idling is permitted up to fifteen minutes an hour).

Chicago, Fresh York, Philadelphia and Boston have similar regulations. Those caught idling for too long can face a fine.

All experts agree that drivers should take it effortless in the very first few minutes of driving. Henmueller suggested driving no more than forty five miles per hour for the very first five to ten minutes.

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