Hey,

So I keep hearing about letting the car warm up and cool down, how long should I let the car warm up or cool down? Why is it that we have to do this? How bad is it to not do it?

Thanks

 

Its a good idea to let any car warm up before you drive it hard. Oil flow is less when the engine is cold, and it is hard on the turbo to make it spool (giving the car lots of gas causes the turbo to "spool" or spin up) when it is cold. If you drive the car hard, meaning giving the car lots of gas (no matter what your rpms, if you give you car lots of gas in a high gear with low rpms, your turbo will spool just as much as flooring the gas while you are in a lower gear with high rpms, if that makes any sense to you), you need to let the engine idle, 1-4 minutes seems to be what most people generally do. The reason for this is that the turbo is cooled and lubricated with engine oil. The turbo becomes very hot when the car is driven hard. If the engine is immediately shut off after the engine has been driven hard, the oil pump also shuts off, causing oil to sit in one spot at the turbo and prevents it from circulating. Since the turbo is so hot, the standing oil cooks and can turn to sludge, which will plug up the turbo and oil lines. This causes poor oil flow in the future which causes the turbo to eventually fail. The hot turbo is also the reason why synthetic should be used especially in the 1.8T engine, since the oil runs hotter because of the turbo and synthetic oil can stand higher temperatures better.

 

Warm up is just a good idea in general, and I'm saying turn on the car, get yourself situated, (scrape windows with car running), put on seatbelt, etc. That gives you a minute, maybe two, then drive it softly for the first mile until you see the coolant temp has begun to rise. Cool down is even easier. Depending on the severity of the drive I let it idle between 15 seconds and two minutes. This again gives you time to unload, be a gentleman and open your lady's door, etc. The reason for short cool down time is the fact that our cars are both oil and coolant cooled. The convection currents in the coolant will cause it to circulate for awhile after the car has shut off.

 

Alright thanks for the info guys.