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Revving a cold engine


SJ350z

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So I was at work the other day and was having a moan to a friend about another friend that tried to rev my car from cold . I snapped at him and he looked fairly embarrassed and he should know better as he drives a performance car. Anyway while I was having my little rant , to my surprise the friend I was moaning to turned round and said revving a NA engine from cold won't do anything.. It's only FI cars that will suffer

 

Can someone please clarify this? Was I being a big lairy ape throwing the toys out of the pram or is my friend very misinformed? :shrug:

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I have no technical reasoning behind it but I've always believed the same as you. Certainly with the oil pressure gauge that goes flying up when the car is cold and I can't imagine that's much good for it.

 

I'm sure someone better informed will come and agree or otherwise with a proper reason!

 

Ed

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you should never rev any engine from cold it should always be warmed up first doesn't matter what car/engine it is that's how it is and always will be, as your supposed to let your car warm up before you drive it or at least give it 30sec to a min if your in a rush i always let mine get up to about half way on the temperature gauge before i go for a drive as they the oil psi is down to near were it should be, i know you dont have to do this but its safer and it's a habit from having a turbo supra before lol

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He's wrong. No engine should ever be revved from cold.

This with bells, whistles and other noisy parts all over it.

 

It can easily cause friction wear on the pistons, piston rings and cylinder walls. Also I believe from what I've heard it can also damage your CAT's. :thumbdown:

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It's not so much the 'engine' per se that needs warming up it's the oil, which needs to be at a certain temperature before it does it's job properly of lubricating between metal parts rubbing together and those metal parts have expanded due to the heat produced during the combustion process. All engines suffer from this except 2 stroke where some of the oiling process is partly taken care of in the fuel mix. :)

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Thanks for the clarification , glad I had words with the guy. Think he's a complete tool now tbh.. prattles on about how he knows about cars and goes and does that. Wasn't to redline only around 4-5k but not the point at all. Thanks for the all the messages chaps ! Never letting anyone near my car again :ninja:

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It not the revving a cold engine thats a problem its revving it with no load, the same really applies to a hot engine as well, however the term revving needs to be clarified, just bringing the revs/blipping up to say 3 to 4K is no real problem, but i wouldn't hold engine revs at that while cold.

The only real difference in todays engines is the clearances and the material's, which are designed around modern oil technology, so engines are designed to be worked from cold, and modern synthetic multi grade oils can support this with no problem.

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I must admit, I never rev my engine from cold and when I drive off I stick to 2k revs until the car is fully up to temperature. It's something I've always done. Not sure if it does any good, but makes my conscience clear lol

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Well this just kind of went back and forwards. I'd still rather not rev my car knowing what I know now due to the responses from our forum members. No harm in sensible driving for 15 minutes after all. The car has plenty of useable power up to 3k imo having good amounts of torque. Some people though eh... what kind of insensitive plank starts revving a friends car? :dry:

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My FTO had a lock in the mapping that wouldn't let you go over certain RPM until the engine was up to temperature. Not sur if the Z has a similar system as I've never tried revving it from cold but it wouldn't surprise me if there was something there to prevent damage to the engine! (Not that you should test this!!) :) Maybe one of the real gurus could let us know, Alex, Mark??

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My FTO had a lock in the mapping that wouldn't let you go over certain RPM until the engine was up to temperature.

 

My MR2 2zz engine was the same. The engine normally has the rev limiter at 8.2k but if the temp was below 65 ish it was limited to 5k.

 

All car ownership manuals I've had say set off after about 1-2 minutes but don't load the engine until normal operating temp.

 

I've also heard many times that worst engine wear is at cold start up.

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Recently I had to walk away from a keyboard war with a member on another (mixed) car forum about super unleaded and how I refused to use 95 in my car. He was saying it was stupid because it makes no difference in NA cars, only FI. I felt like punching him in the face, but chose to walk away as I'm relatively green on that forum with less than 100 posts.

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Recently I had to walk away from a keyboard war with a member on another (mixed) car forum about super unleaded and how I refused to use 95 in my car. He was saying it was stupid because it makes no difference in NA cars, only FI. I felt like punching him in the face, but chose to walk away as I'm relatively green on that forum with less than 100 posts.

 

Another forum!!!!!! How long has this being going on!

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Recently I had to walk away from a keyboard war with a member on another (mixed) car forum about super unleaded and how I refused to use 95 in my car. He was saying it was stupid because it makes no difference in NA cars, only FI. I felt like punching him in the face, but chose to walk away as I'm relatively green on that forum with less than 100 posts.

 

Another forum!!!!!! How long has this being going on!

:lol:

 

Link:

:byebye:

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I had the same type of conversation with a Merc driver the other day. Drives me mad...

 

He basically revs the nuts off his car as soon as he leaves work. I explained what I did which is drive steady until my engine is ran up to temperature, and he just laughed at me. :rant:

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Isn't the idea to warm your car up slowly aswell to stop the metal heating up to quickly and cracking say a head that's what I've been taught. Kind of like you don't put boiled water on an icy windscreen for the same reason.

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I had the same type of conversation with a Merc driver the other day. Drives me mad...

 

He basically revs the nuts off his car as soon as he leaves work. I explained what I did which is drive steady until my engine is ran up to temperature, and he just laughed at me. :rant:

Yep I know exactly the kind of idiot he is ~ same as my old boss.

 

My old boss who had a 2001 Audi S3 reckoned he knew a lot about cars & modding them. Takes me out one day in his S3 when we had to pick up some paint supplies and what does he do? Redlines his car in 1st, 2nd & 3rd from the first set of traffic lights we came to even though I could see that not even his coolant temperature gauge had started to move yet let alone the oil temp. :scare: Literally started 30 seconds earlier from cold (and it's a turbo car!). :surrender:

 

Think he was hoping I'd be impressed or something by this but I wasn't as....

  1. The car was not warmed up correctly.
  2. We where on a public road & not a drag strip.
  3. My Zeds definitely quicker. ;):lol:

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