KremlinGremlin

Those of you who live in cold climates can relate. I've always let my car warm up a little, but it takes it a couple of minutes to get all the way warmed up, and I find that is a waste of gas. Usually I will let the engine idle for a minute to a minute and a half and then drive it while taking it easy on the accelerator (below 2 RPMs), then once its warmed up, I drive it normally.

How long do you guys let your car warm up for?

audi8k

I do not idle in order to warm up the _engine_. If needed I let it idle while scraping off the ice from the windows. The reason is for visibility, to have some heat from the defroster.

Quote from the Audi manual:
"The engine takes a very long time to warm up when it is running at idling speed. Mechanical wear and pollutant emissions are also especially high during this initial warm-up phase. It is therefore best to drive off immediately after starting the engine. Avoid running the engine at high speed."

And I would add: avoid running the engine at high load.

Scotty (UK)

Agreed. I run for as short a time as possible. I then let it warm thru on a run.

My understanding is that at low rpm there's not the generated oil pressure to ensure the oil gets all around the engine hence the increased wear.

I start and go (subject to de-icing etc).

BananSWE

I give it some 30 sec to get a chance to start pumping the oil around. I reach in and start up my car and after that I unplug my electric heater, maybe sweep some snow off and scrape that little ice that forms at the bottom of the windshield when using a heater inside the car. That takes maybe 30 secs or so. After that I hop in and takes off really slow and soft on the pedals.

Avant4Adam

0. unless letting it defrost/deice so I can see. just get in and drive. no need to baby it.

a4-bob

I get in and drive, per the owners manual instructions, but I take it easy for awhile. I'd say that idling isn't going to do much good.

You can see the actual oil temp if you apply the lap-timer vcds tweak. i'm surprised how long it takes for the oil to get up to normal operating temps, even while driving; much longer than what the analog gauge shows.

hyperionguy

Getting the oil up to operating temp takes a long time. The guage in the instrument cluster shows coolant temp not oil.

In my 2.7T (which has both coolant and oil temp guages) it generally takes about 8-10 minutes of normal driving to fully heat, or about half my daily work commute. It'll start to move off the lowest peg after about 3 minutes of normal driving.

Crucible35

As many expressed on Audizine, I wait for the RPMs to drop down from 1300 to 800 or about 30 seconds and then I drive off slowly. The other thing I do is I always shut everything off (radio, climate control or any accessories) before I turn off the car on the last trip. That way, when you start the vehicle again, you're not over taxing the battery. This could be just an OCD thing, but in all my cars over the years, I have never replaced a battery or had any electrical issues and I normally own cars for 8-10 years and 250K plus kilometers.

Zafi

I pour 2 litres of hot water over the screen, 2 flicks of the windscreen wiper then drive off in S mode because in D it hardly revs above 2000 rpm and takes an age to warm up.

Scotty (UK)

And if you held it in 1st and drove everywhere at 7500rpm it would warm up even quicker