Warming up your car before driving in cold weather can damage the engine (2016)
I&#x27;m sure the cited expert really is an expert, but this article fails miserably at conveying any cohesive understanding from them to you. It&#x27;s full of conclusions that don&#x27;t follow from their leading statements.<p>My understanding about warming up an engine before putting load on it had nothing to do with fuel or power steering fluid, it was about thermal expansion of all the machined parts that suffer wear if they are run under load while they are loose-fitting from being cold. This is a thing even in summer and merely worse in winter.<p>This article barely talks about this and doesn&#x27;t say anything intelligible but just says &quot;stress&quot; from stepping on it right away.<p>Maybe that issue also no longer exists on modern engines, but nothing in this article explains that.<p>Mostly everything this says about why idling is supposedly bad, applies to operating the thing at all, idling or not. The conclusion would be &quot;don&#x27;t use your car at all in winter&quot;<p>Well, if you&#x27;re going to use it at all, then you&#x27;re already doing the damage, so you might as well be comfortable and have an easier time clearing the windows. The device only exists in the first place to serve you.