GRAND RAPIDS, Mich — To warm up your car, or not warm up your car? That’s the age-old question as temperatures start to drop.
Now you can find a lot of experts on the internet with a lot of expert things to say about both. So, I decided to go to the source and talk to true experts about what we should do. Experts like automotive technician Trevor Bouman at Christian Brothers in Grand Rapids... where had a pretty quick answer to me asking if it helps to warm up your car before driving.
“Not at all,” he said. “If it's super cold out your oil’s thicker, and most cars can't filter thick oil. So what happens is when you start your car, the oil starts getting pumped around, but it's too thick to go through the filter. And there's actually a bypass valve. So, it'll skip the filter entirely. And so while you're sitting there, letting your car warm up and idle, you're just circling cycling, unfiltered oil. And it's not until you're driving that the oil temperature is high enough that it gets thin, and it starts filtering the oil. The quickest way to warm up your car is to drive it.”
Cycling that unfiltered oil is not great for your engine. So according to Trevor the best way to warm up the car is to drive it. Which makes sense. Plus, you save on gas, because you are not just letting the vehicle run.
So it seems like we might have our answer here.
But with as much debate as there is online about this topic, I figured the answer couldn’t be that simple, so I started asking around town. And that brought me to automotive technician Mike Nash, just down the road at Tamminga’s Garagewho told me he does warm up his car in the winter.
"I believe it's good because one your fluids they need to cycle," Nash said. "It's also good for parts because it's hard starting on cars, and everything that went when the weather's cold parts work harder. So your engine is working harder when it's cold when it's warm, it doesn't work as hard.
Ok – so like I was seeing being shouted on the internet. It seems like even the experts have different opinions on this topic. Leaving the decision up to you.
"A lot of people do it mainly because they like the inside of their cab to be warm, and their windshields to be defrosted," said Nash. "Because it's easier to see and it's more comfortable in the vehicle. But I believe it's beneficiary mainly for your fluids.'
If that is you don’t worry, even if you like starting your car for a little while – letting the car warm up for a little is probably ok.
"I don't think you're gonna necessarily hurt anything with a couple of minutes of sitting there," Bouman told FOX17. "It's more prolonged idling like, you know, over 15 minutes, I'd say it's probably not great. The defrost is gonna work better once the vehicles warmed up."
For some other winter vehicle preparations check out the video below.
