How does one avoid engine damage when starting a cold engine?
Is it even possible?

Jeffr1 wrote, "More then 90% of engine wear occurs on cold start up, warming you engine up in the morning at idle from a cold start is one of the worst things you can do."

So what can be done? it isn't reasonable to have an engine running 24/7/365.
Would an oil additive like lucas which makes oil "stickier' and thereby keep more lubrication on the top section of the engine help mitigate?

What do those in the know do.....

 

The statement above about engine wear is true but this cumulative wear still allows engine to go hundreds of thousands of miles between rebuilds.

I believe the intent of the statement is to discourage owners from putting undue load on a cold engine or starting the engine unnecessarily.

The issue is 'cold parts' not 'lack of oil' so some miracle in a can like Lucas will do nothing.

 

What is this "cold" you speak of?

 

First thing to do is remember that "damage" and "wear" are two different things. Wear is inevitable. And damage requires a particular set of circumstances to occur.

I would follow typical/normal service procedures and not worry about it....unless you're in seriously sub-freezing conditions in which case an engine warmer might be a good idea.

Every time I cold start my 1995 Honda I know more wear is taking place....and it's coming up on 265,000 miles on the original engine, running sweet as a nut. I'm not alone. The world is plum full of high mileage cars, engines running quite well, owned by people who give cold starts less thought than I give in deciding what sock to put on first

Cheers
DD

 

My take on Jeff's comment "90% wear occurs on cold start up" is that you shouldn't start an engine and leave it ticking over for ages with the oil pressure low as there is less oil being chucked around the engine, neither should you start the car and blast it down the road from cold.

Start the car, allow the oil pressure to rise without revving the hell out of the engine, and then drive steadily until the car has warmed up at lower RPM, this simply allows the oil to circulate fully without putting too much load on lightly lubricated parts.

As Doug says wear is inevitable, all you can do is minimize it by taking care of your engine i.e. regular servicing good quality oil and careful driving.

Or you can do the regular servicing etc. drive it as hard as you like and expect that you will get more wear.

 

This type of operation doesn't really cause extra engine wear from lack of oil, it just wastes fuel and prolongs the warm up phase.

 

Mikey,

My comment needs to be read as a whole, the majority of opinion from many sources is that the cold start engine wear is mainly due to lack of lubrication.

Older oil pumps are slower to raise oil pressure so this also slows down the circulation of the oil at cold start up.

A lot of people don't realise that you should not switch off a turbo charged engine after it has just been revved up, as the oil supply is immediately stopped, but the turbo can still be spinning at very high RPM, this causes high wear in the Turbo.

 

This has been debated widely on just about every car/motorcycle/power boat discussion board in existence.

My 31 years with an engine OEM provided me with plenty of first hand evidence to prove that there's just as much residual oil on engine surfaces after three years of inactivity as after three hours. Engines in storage were specifically not to be disturbed until being returned to active service.

The higher rate of wear when cold is due to less than optimal clearances, not lack of oil.

 

Blimey,

I'm third generation in a family of motor engineers and didn't realize that the oil had so little bearing on cold start engine wear or that oil could cling to all the engine parts so well for 3 years, fascinating.

 

My employer got itself boxed into a corner by forcing owners to jump through very expensive hoops when it came to putting engines into storage or bringing them back out.

A threatened lawsuit basically stated 'put up or shut up' with the subject matter being residual oil on engines in long term storage. A series of engines known to have been left untouched for three years were disassembled and inspected. The volume of residual oil (as stated above) was similar to an engine that had been standing for just a day.

The applicable overhaul and maintenance manuals were rewritten accordingly. Twenty years on there has been no rise in the rate of engine issues resulting from this change.

Turbo equipped engines do need a few seconds or minutes at idle to allow the unit to cool, partially accomplished by lower exhaust gas temperatures but also by continuing the flow of oil from the engine. A large part of issues with turbos is the susceptibility of standard dino oil to coke/carbonize at elevated temperatures. This can occur simply through heat soak back from the hot side of the turbo unit if shutdown too quickly- as you've stated.

 

I think a lot of this stuff related to when we had a lot of sulphur in petrol. When burnt, the sulfur goes on to form sulphuric acid via sulfur dioxide that damages piston rings and cylinder bores, and also gets washed down and ends up in the oil where it can do even more damage. By starting an engine and then immediately going on a run, the faster throughput of the engine means the sulphur dioxide gets forced out into the exhaust and away to atmosphere. If the car is just left idling this action is not so rigorous. Of course, now there is hardly any sulphur in petrol so maybe the advice is a bit out-of-date.

From the earliest days of the old XK engine, there was a port in the block to fit a block heater. I don't think anybody fits these nowadays, although maybe some people put a heater under the car where it gets really cold.

 

My S-type came fitted with a block heater. They're still pretty much standard equipment here in the colonies.

 

Ettore Bugatti is famously accredited with one of the greatest ever retorts, in response to repeated customer complaints about how hard his cars were to start when cold. Which was "If someone's rich enough to afford one of my cars. They should be rich enough to build a heated garage to keep it in."

 

For all Bugatti's fancy designs you think he would have figured out how to design a practical working choke.

 

Cars are meant to be driven so I agree with Doug and others, just do good maintenance and not worry about it. If you really want to try to prevent some of that wear you could try things like this, (I have no experience but have heard others using it) Welcome to Preoil.com


For me I love high performance but I drive my cars hard and keep up on the maintenance and not worry about it. I installed a light weight aluminum block/head GM LS1 V8 in my Jaguar for reliability but I drive it harder and much more than most as I already am approaching 60,000 miles in the first two years. I am not worried when this motor reaches the typical 300,000 miles or so when they finally start degrading, I will likely get a new create LS V8 engine but more like 630 HP I think you should drive these cars as much as you can and not worry you can always rebuild or get a new engine.