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Stop Burning A Hole In Your Pocket Warming Your Car In Winter |
By:
Scott Siegel |
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Stop Burning a Hole in Your Pocket Warming Your Car in Winter
Scott Siegel
Winter is a hard time for drivers and car owners. It wreaks havoc on your fuel mileage. Chances are you are an unwitting ally to hurting your gas mileage. The wrong idea about warming your car up might 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.
A great many car owners idle their car for anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes to let their cars warm up in cold temperatures. The fact is,it takes no more than 30 seconds of idling to get oil circulating in the engine before you can drive away. Do not idle your car for more than 30 seconds. Anything beyond that is a complete waste.
When you idle your car you are burning gas but not going anywhere. When that happens it means you are getting zero miles per gallon. You might think that idling your vehicle for just a few minutes or so is no big deal, but you 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.
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?
Warm your car up by driving it. To operate efficiently your car needs to warm up other parts in addition to the engine. Tires, transmission, wheel bearings and other moving parts also need to warm up. Your car's catalytic converter doesn't function at its peak until it reaches between 400C and 800C. The only way these other parts warm up is by driving. The reality is, to warm your car up completely you have to drive it anyway.
To save gas and increase gas mileage in the winter one of the simplest things you can do is warm your car by driving it, not by idling. Not only will it save you gas and money but you will also be doing something positive for the environment. That warm car will stop burning a hole in your pocket.
Scott Siegel has written a 143 page book of industry insider secrets on saving gas and money at the pump (beatthegaspump.com/. Visit us to learn how you can get http://www.beatthegaspump.com/ better gas mileage. Find out how to http://www.beatthegaspump.com/ increase gas mileage. This and other http://www.uberarticles.com/?id=25570&b=79 unique content 'improve fuel economy' articles are available with free reprint rights.
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Article Source: http://www.statssheet.com/articles/article61642.html |
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