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

Author: ScottSiegel
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Winter is a difficult time for drivers. It does it's best to wreak havoc on your gas mileage. You may be playing the part of an unwitting ally to winter's effect on your fuel economy. Improperly warming your car up could be burning a hole in your pocket.

The first thing you need to do in cold weather get out of the habit of letting your car warm up when you start it. Old cars may have needed some warm up time, today's cars don't.

Many drivers idle their car for 5 to 10 minutes in the winter to let their cars warm up. You should not let your car idle for more than 30 seconds. You need no more than 30 seconds of idling to circulate the engine oil before you can drive away on cold days

Idling is by definition burning gas but not going anywhere. When you idle, you are getting zero miles per gallon. You can't get worse gas mileage than that. Most drivers think that idling a car for just a few minutes is no big deal, but they are wrong.

To get an idea about how much fuel you are burning by letting your car idle for 5 to 10 minutes when you start it consider this. Assume you idle on the short side, only 5 minutes when you start your car in the morning. Most likely you idle for 5 minutes again, when you start your car again to drive home.

Therefore your car is idling for a minimum of 10 minutes a day. For illustrative purposes we consider winter to be four months long, or 120 days long. If a car is idling for 10 minutes a day for 120 days then it is idling for 1200 minutes during the winter period.

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.

To prevent the loss of fuel economy in the winter one of the easiest things you can do is warm your car not by idling it but by driving it. Changing the way you warm your car not only helps your fuel economy but it also is positive for the environment. There is less fuel burning and adding to the green house effect and there is less fuel burning a hole in your pocket.

About the Author

Scott Siegel is the author of a 143 page manual of industry insider information 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.