Should you let your car idle for extended periods of time?

Everybody wants their cars to stay in tip-top shape and serve them good for a lot of years. To achieve that some people follow the owner’s manual on what to do and what not to do in a car and some people go for myths that others have been telling them since ages. One of those is, should you leave your car idling for a long period of time or not?

Also Read: 10 things that can cause an engine to lose power

The answer to this question mainly depends on where you live and the type of car you have. For example, how old your car is, is it a petrol or a diesel, does it have idling stop, etc. We will discuss if you should leave your car idling for long periods of time for all types of cars. We will not, however, discuss if you should let your car idle before starting it in the morning and driving away. That discussion is for another time.

Starting off with older cars. If you own a very old car, then there is a high chance that your car may have a mechanical fan instead of electric fans to cool the radiator. In a colder climate, you can still idle for a little while, but it is advised not to do so. In case you live in hot cities like Lahore then your engine could easily overheat causing a lot of problems. Another problem with older cars is that it may be pumping extra fuel in and that can dilute the oil and that is never a good thing. When extra fuel is delivered in the combustion chamber, this fuel can seep past the engine cylinder bores to the engine oil pan. When engine oil accidentally mixes with petrol fuel, it can lead to engine damage due to poor lubrication from the contaminated oil. So if you have an old car with a mechanical fan never let your car idle for extended period of time.

RECOMMENDED: Bikes for Sale in Karachi

For newer cars, it’s completely fine to let your car idle for a longer period of time as they have an electric fan that sucks in lots of air and keeps the engine cool. Even with the AC on there is almost slight to no chance of damaging your car. Leaving your car idling for long will, of course, give you terrible fuel economy as the car is only idling for a long time and not moving and if the AC is also on you can say goodbye to good fuel economy.

Now comes diesel engine. The way diesel engines work is that if they are idling they use more air and less fuel so there is no problem with letting your diesel car idle for a longer period of time. If you are old enough and have seen the rise and fall of Toyota Corolla 2.0D, then you might remember that people used to let their “O.Ds” idle for as long as they’d want.

 

Nowadays, most modern cars come with the feature called idling stop or eco idle. What that does is that it shuts your car off if you come to a complete stop and starts the engine as soon as you press the accelerator pedal, which is, of course, to save fuel and get better fuel economy. Let’s say you have a car with eco idle and get stuck in traffic for longer periods of time regularly or there is some VIP movement and the road has been shut down, now you can let your car idle by turning off the eco idle, so that your AC remains on but remember to push your gear lever into Neutral (N) or Park (P) rather than keeping it in Drive (D). Because if your car is running and in drive, the transmission is still being operated and the torque converter keeping rotating which will cause extra wear and tear and may even overheat. The transmission is meant to keep moving and not sit with drag making it hot. Same is the case with manual cars, remember to shift into neutral rather than keeping the clutch pedal depressed.

This is pretty much it. Let us know if you have any more tips regarding idling in comments sections below.