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Why Warming Your Car in Winter is Burning a Hole in Your Pocket

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.

Most drivers are in the habit of warming their cars up in cold weather. They are under the mistaken idea that their car needs to warm up for a considerable amount of time to operate properly. Older vehicles may have needed to warm up but current cars do not.

Many car owners idle their car for anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes in cold weather to let their cars warm up. You need no more than 30 seconds of idling to get your oil circulating before you can drive away. Do not let your car idle for more than 30 seconds.

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?

The correct way to warm your car and economize your gas is by driving it. Many drivers don't realize that other parts of the car need to warm up in order for it to operate efficiently. The transmission, the wheel bearings, the tires and other moving parts also need to warm up. The catalytic converter on the car doesn't operate at its optimum until it heats up to between 400C and 800C. The only way the other parts of the car can warm up is by driving. It turns out that the only way to completely warm up a car with all of it's parts is to drive it.

One of the easiest things you can do to prevent the loss of fuel economy in the winter is letting your car warm up efficiently. Warm it by driving it not by idling it. Changing the way you warm your car is also good for the environment. You end up burning less fuel which slows down burning a hole in the ozone and stops the burning of that hole in your pocket.

Article Source: http://www.ezarticles.info

Scott Siegel is the author of a 143 page manual of automotive industry insider secrets on saving gas and dollars at the pump (beatthegaspump.com). Visit us to learn how you can get better gas mileage. Find out how to improve gas mileage.