There are two types of people in the world. : those that start the car and wait patiently for the engine to reach its normal operating temperature, and those that start immediately as soon as the car is started. So what is the correct behavior? To answer this question, Jason Fenske – from the Engineering Explained channel – placed a thermal camera in the engine of his Subaru Crosstrek.
In addition to helping keep the engine lubricated, oil is essential in the engine's temperature increase process , and depending on its viscosity, it may not even be necessary to wait for the engine to warm up at idle. As we've explained in this article, accelerating absurdly in the hope of warming up the engine more quickly can actually be harmful, as the engine isn't hot enough, and consequently the oil isn't either, causing the oil not to lubricate properly and increasing the internal wear/friction.
In this case, with an ambient temperature of minus 6 degrees Celsius, the Subaru Crosstrek engine took just over 5 minutes to reach the ideal operating temperature. Watch the video below for a more detailed explanation:
Now in good Portuguese…
Unless the outside temperature is radically low, in a modern engine and with the right type of oil there is no need to wait for it to warm up at idle . But beware: in the first few minutes of driving, we must avoid sudden accelerations, taking the engine to a high rpm range.