Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 14:42:32 -0800
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Re: A couple of questions.
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re
What is so nasty about the cold start short run scenario?
The ignorant folks among us need to know.
What I do is try to be very easy on equipment..
take good care of it, use it intelligently ....etc....
many things will last nearly indefinitely if taken care of ...
as we all know.
that water you see coming out of the exhaust pipes sometimes, on gasoline cars in cold conditions..
That's an acid. It eats exhaust systems. Cars that do short trips in cold conditions have very short muffler life...in other words ..until it's warmed up and under some load ...
there's acid in the exhaust system ..and in the oil.
condensation happens ..moisture gets in the oil with the van and engine just sitting ..
that moisture needs to be burned off ..
until the water ..and that clear liquid , which is a byproduct of gasoline combustion in cold conditions ..
is burned off...
the oil is not as effective.
More fuel is burned when the engine is cold, way more.
For fuel mileage record cars they want them running as warm as possible.
Same for emission testing ....want it as warm as possible..
and that's what engines are designed to do well............run.
They are not designed to be optimized cold ....
because hopefully that period will be over soon ..
Mainly the oil can't do it's job really well...and metal wears ...during that cold period..
and it's wasteful of fuel.
So the sooner you get through the very cold engine period, the better.
Adding external heat helps ..block heater etc.
But once running ...the idea is to get to well warmed up as quickly as possible..
while putting the least stress o the engine.
oh....also ...many people do not realize how they are driving actually.
I saw one guy ....who had been driving about 40 years ....on his turbo diesel vanagon ..
he's short shift ever shift...at about 1,800 rpm ..barely get through the gear, then shift up extra early ...even 1,500 ...and then ...*floor it* .every last shift, he lugged his engines badly every single shift for the last whatever...10,000 shifts. His previous fully rebuilt 1.6TD was having a serious oil control issue at only some 40K miles.....due to his lugging the snot out of it every single shfit.....man !
I have this 1.9 wbxr engine that has a piston slap in it.
Many people might not even notice it, but to me, cold, it's very apparent..
Those 1.9 wbxrs are extra smooth running ....with really long lasting bottom ends..
so they're usually not pistons slappy at all...
and I bet the way that engines owner started that engine ..
to help it fire off.............they revved it fairly hard ..to 'wake it'...
like click-vroom-REV hard .
You want to start the engine as gently as possible.
there's more, but enough for now .
Scott
----- Original Message -----
From: Michael
To: Scott Daniel - Turbovans
Cc: vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com
Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2010 3:11 PM
Subject: Re: A couple of questions.
Scott Daniel - Turbovans wrote:
> also ...keep heater temp lever off or nearly off, until some temp is showing
> on the gauge.
> ( if heaters are on full from stone cold...
> it may never warm up properly , or take, way, way too long. )
>
> also ..
> waterboxer vanagons ..
> they must be driven until fully warmed up, every time.
>
> about the worst thing you can do for one is fire it up stone cold, then
> drive only about two miles.
> They don't like that at all.
What is so nasty about the cold start short run scenario?
The ignorant folks among us need to know.
Side Note, quote of the day:
Naming bicycles anthropormorphizes them and they don't like that.
--
Michael Rasmussen
http://www.jamhome.us/
Be Appropriate && Follow Your Curiosity
