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Improve Fuel economy by reducing engine warm up time idling.

You have to remember that when you are idling, you are getting ZERO MILES PER GALLON. The less you idle, the better your fuel economy.

To those of you that live in a climate that doesn’t go down to -30c/-20f, this in part will not be a huge concern for you. But some parts of this article will be relevant. A lot of people note that in the winter, the amount of kilometers/miles they get per tank drops quite considerably. To help stop a portion of that fuel economy loss, some simple tips could drop your fuel costs by a noticeable margin.

The one thing people need to stop doing is allowing they engine to sit in the driveway for 15 minutes warming up before they leave. If you are using a proper grade of oil for your car, warming up the engine by idling for long periods does not help you out at all. For one, idling is the slowest way to warm up your engine when compared to actually driving the vehicle. Your engine during driving will warm up in a 1/3 of the time than it will sitting idling at low speed in your driveway. Also consider that idling will dilute your oil a bit through fuel dilution from and will raise engine wear slightly. After you get the oil hot after driving for a long period, the fuel in the oil will eventually evaporate, but short trips and lots of idling will reduce you oil’s ability to lubricate properly.

To save fuel, you can switch to a synthetic oil which will flow better at startup and thus will stop the need for long idle warmup. Keep in mind that synthetic will save you money all the time when operating your car and not just during startup. But even with a standard proper grade engine oil, after starting, a warmup should last for no longer than 3-4 minutes in the driveway. During this time your heat should be completely off and no defrost running so you can stop the engine’s heat being removed by the cabin heater. Having the heat all full blast pushing cold air DOES NOTHING to defrost the interior. Give the engine a chance to warm up the coolant and engine first.

If you are having internal frost problems, you need to clean your floor mats and dry out the inside of your car. Removing all water from inside the car and especially from the floor mats will stop most of this. Also when the cabing is warm during long drives, open the windows to allow the dry cold air in and the warm moist air out from time to time to dry out the interior. From time to time, bring your wet carmats into your house and hang them up to drip dry or you can buy rubber winter floor mats that don’t absorb water and thus, only need to be dumped out occasionally. If your interior is dry, you won’t get any frost inside your windows.

After the 3-4 minutes, take is easy on the car as you pull away and make sure there is no rapid acceleration. Slowly accelerating up to speed will allow the engine to warm up and will not stress any components. Of course do this making sure you can look through your windshield. Within a couple kilometers you will see that the windshield will start to clear quite rapidly seeing the engine will be warming up a lot faster but make sure you keep the defrost on and the fan on low till so you don’t all of a sudden start to cool your engine down a bit. Having the fan on full blast not only loads your alternator, but it also makes the cabin feel colder due to windchill. More is not better.

Another way to cut down on idling is to use an engine block heater. Buy a block heater timer and have it set to come on an hour before you come out to start it if you own a four cylinder, or two hours if it is a V6 or a V8. Running a block heater all night is both hard on your electricity bill and is not needed to start a standard engine. A normal block heater is about 1500watts and running it for 10 hours WILL BE VERY EXPENSIVE and a complete waste of money.

Also remember, once your car has been driven, you do not have to warm a car up every time you get in it that day. If it has been less than 6 hours, just start up and drive away.

Through these small tips you can easy boost your fuel economy by 10-15% in the winter and save money. Safe driving!

Synthetic Motor Oil will Save You Money

When it comes to conversation about changing your engine oil to synthetic, the most often thing commented on is that changing to synthetic will make your engine leak and it costs too much money. Both of these comments are untrue.

To start off about the engine leaking myth, if your engine is poorly taken care of and not maintained, a leak might occur when synthetic oil cleans the sludge plugging a leak in a poorly conditioned seal which was destroyed by poor engine oil maintenance. This is not the fault of the synthetic oil seeing it is doing what it was supposed to do and keep your engine clean. But mind you, people that don’t take care of their engines in most cases don’t bother with the change to synthetic seeing they are too cheap to take care of their vehicle right from the beginning. The people that have to be warned is a person buying a used vehicle without knowing the previous maintenance history.

With that being said, any well maintained engine can be changed over to synthetic at practically any mileage if properly maintained. The leak myth came from the 70s when the first synthetic oils tended to shrink engine seals due to improper formulation. But remember, that was 30 YEARS AGO! The myth has lived on through pure ignorance and propagated by people that in the first place don’t know a damn thing about motor oil and was just passing on a complete lie. So now you know the truth. If you have taken care of your engine, you shouldn’t have any problems. But remember, if you haven’t taken care of your engine in the first place, you might think twice about synthetic.

The second point people need to realise is that when synthetic oil is properly utilized, it is actually a cheaper oil change. Take for instance a standard conventional oil change. Say you change your oil every 5000 miles and it costs you $30. With a synthetic oil change, you can easily double the amount of miles you put on that one oil change seeing synthetic is made to go for longer change intervals without losing proper lubrication. And seeing synthetic will always help you fuel economy, when adding that together with the money you save from doing one oil change for double or more mileage, you see in the end you will save money. Synthetic oil changes are never double the price of a conventional change and if they are, then go to a different oil change place seeing they are lying to you.

So you add it up that you get better protection, better fuel economy, longer oil change intervals that save your time and you can see that a synthetic oil change does save you money and results in a better overall running engine.

You can’t beat that deal.

Tags: oil

Saving Money on your Oil Changes: Part 2

If you haven’t read the first part of this article, please do so now before reading this section.

Now that you have realised that most oil change places will rip you off by telling you to change your oil too often, the best way to get good information is to read your car’s owner’s manual. In there you will find the true information needed to see how often you should change it.

Most car companies will know a lot more than any oil change place filled with under paid workers all managed by a commissioned shop manager than get a cut based on how many oil changes and extras he can get from the population in total over a year. The more the store makes, the more he makes. This is how you see why he won’t be an unbiased source for information.

Read your manual, follow their guildlines and save money. some cars have an oil life monitor and in most cases, it is ideal and works great. If you have this features, use it and don’t think you know better than it seeing you don’t.

Now an additional bit of misinformation is the life of your oil based on time and not mileage. When it comes to this, use common sense. If you have only driven 1000 miles and it has been 3 months and a guideline states you should change your oil……don’t! There is no way your oil is depleted, dirty or need of a change and all you are doing is dumping money and good oil down the drain. If you put less than 5000miles a year on your engine due to it being a seasonal car/truck or you just don’t drive much, changing the oil every year or in the worst cases every 6 months will be more than sufficient. If it is a seasonal car, change the oil at the end of the season before storage, then drive it for the whole next season and repeat.

To boil things down, oil will not change in 3 months if it is lightly driven and remember, the oil has more than likely been on the shelf for a year and you don’t see oil on the shelf going bad. Now I know in the crankcase it is a slightly different story but you get the picture.

Tags: automotive