5.3 care of engine when cold

[brianh26]

was wondering what kind of RPM barrier I should have as far as how high I rev ar acceleration when its very cold out around 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Dont want to put premature damage to my engine. Thanks

[Colossus]

Running full synthetic oil in the engine will greatly help reduce engine wear when starting the truck when cold, but a good rule of thumb I like to follow is in temps below 40 degrees when first starting after the vehicle has sat for more than 4 hours, I'll let it idle for a minimum of 1 minute. Remember that colder oil and fluids are thicker and more dense, thus making lubrication more difficult and also results in higher pressure levels. I also will put the vehicle into gear and sit on the brake for about 15-30 seconds in real cold weather to allow the transmission pump to circulate some of that cold thick tranny fluid around as well. (this won't work on every type of auto transmission) Avoid hard acceleration if you can for the first 2-3 minutes of driving and I think that should be enough to put your mind at ease. Just like you want to do a good warm up/stretch before you begin exercising, you want to let your vehicle do a little warming up too.

[00Silverado4x4]

Yea 5-30w RP made my piston slap go away. Much quieter at idle. I let mine idle 10-20, minutes before i drive mine

10-20 minutes??? That seems excessive to me. As j-ten-ner said I just wait for the RPMs to drop down a bit then I go. I'll take it easy for the first mile or so but then I drive as I normally would.

[02suburbanZ71]

Yea 5-30w RP made my piston slap go away. Much quieter at idle. I let mine idle 10-20, minutes before i drive mine

[LaserBlueZ71]

Honestly, this is an old piece of information that seems to follow generations.

 

30+ years ago, machining was nowhere near where it is today. Engines did not have the extremely tight tolerances of today, or fuel injection systems capable of adjusting/firing multiple times per second, per cylinder. Add in the fact that the cheapest, crappiest engine oil you can buy today, is many times more advanced than the very best oil ever used in any engine even 10 years ago. Unless your in anything colder than -20 Celsius, I wouldn't worry about letting anything warm up. In extreme cold I would let the vehicle warm up, but more so to get heat flowing to the cabin than to let the components warm up. The truth is, an engine under load is going to heat up much faster than an idling engine that isn't doing any work. The sloppy, carburated engines of yesteryear needed to warm up before they drove well, but not the engines of today. Once she is running, put it in gear and go.

[sahls01gmc]

Start it, drive it. Worked for the 265,000 miles I put on mine.

 

 

Like stated earlier though, it's like YOU exercising. You wouldn't sleep for 8 hours and then land on your feet and run a marathon race. Take a lil bit to get things moving, then go for it.