Re: Engine Oil or Water Heater Question


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Posted by David Sherman on Sunday, December 11, 2005 at 7:10PM :

In Reply to: Re: Engine Oil or Water Heater Question posted by S. Bear on Sunday, December 11, 2005 at 6:26PM :

Sounds like it's cooler than I thought in your neck of the woods. I'll be curious to see what more experienced PW owners than myself have to say about that as well. It seems to me that the main stress would be a lack of lubrication on start-up, but so long as the oil system is primed and the oil hasn't congealed, you should get oil pressure just as quickly on startup in cold weather as in hot. It's been around 10 deg here for the past week, and when I started up my M37 this morning, the oil pressure came up just as fast as in the summer.

The only other issue I can see is that warmer oil will make for easier cranking, which means less wear on the starter and less demand on the battery. All told, I can't really see how a block or pan heater would do much to reduce wear on the engine, although it would certainly make for easier starting.

I have an old TM called "Maintenance of Ordnance Materiel in Extreme Cold Weather", which I actually read from cover to cover, and they seem to only be concerned with getting the rigs to start and move, not with reducing wear, though of course they didn't expect to be operating 50 year old trucks either. That 1951 TM deals with operating in temperatures down to 65 below, in which steel and rubber are almost as brittle as glass and 30W oil is like wax. They talk about using 10W oil and diluting it with 30% gasoline (!) for extreme cold.

The gist of it seems to be to try to keep vehicles running at all times if possible, or if not, supply some kind of heat to the engine or engine compartment. For my vehicles, if they start easily and I can get them up to proper operating temperature, I don't have any further concerns about wear due to cold weather starting, but if somebody with more experience knows better than that, I'll follow his advice.



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