Can idling car damage engine

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Unnecessary idling can damage a car. Posted on: Fri, 08 February Your Comments. Our Local Heroes. Local Events. Local Sports Gallery. About George. Protect your car engine by idling less. Frequent restarts are no longer hard on a car's engine and battery. Idling actually increases overall engine wear by causing the car to operate for longer than necessary.

Reasons to stop idling A simple turn of your key can keep the air cleaner and save money and fuel. Every time you turn off your car engine in place of idling, you'll: Make the air healthier by cutting down on hazardous pollution in your town or community.

Idling tailpipes spew out the same pollutants as moving cars. These pollutants have been linked to serious human illnesses including asthma, heart disease, chronic bronchitis, and cancer. Help the environment. For every 10 minutes your engine is off, you'll prevent one pound of carbon dioxide from being released carbon dioxide is the primary contributor to global warming. An EDF report shows that in New York City alone, idling cars and trucks produce , tons of carbon dioxide each year.

To offset this amount of global warming pollution, we would need to plant an area the size of Manhattan with trees every single year. Keep money in your wallet and save fuel. And it only takes seconds worth of fuel to restart the car. You can save real money just by shutting off the engine on rail-road crossings, at drive-throughs, on long street lights not recommended for average person etc.

Anecdotally, I've seen a number of and been in one car s that has overheated while idling. Without airflow, you're depending on the fans and thermostat for more than if you were driving. If all's well with the car, you should be perfectly fine idling for some time. However, if the cooling system has an issue, or if the oil pump is getting weak, you may end up with a breakage that otherwise would not have happened or at least wouldn't have happened as soon.

Think of extended idling as a stress test for the car, no problem all is well, but if not, you'll find out about it! You have a much higher probability of not having enough oil pressure at idle. If the engine has any issues - such as wear causing tolerances to be larger than initially engineered, or too thin of oil - the lack of oil pressure will be more exaggerated.

Idling for long periods could be disastrously more damaging to your engine then the same amount of time spent cruising. I live in Canada and I can tell you the wear on starting an engine is greater than idling for a few minutes, guaranteed, especially since here in the winter it can only take minutes for your engine to drop from full operating temp down to room temperature if it isn't running, and cold starting an engine means less viscous oil in the crankcase as well as little to no oil on the valvetrain during the first rotation or two.

Additionally, all engines apply more fuel during warm up than during normal operational temperatures, simply to help them warm up faster. This is a rough guide, you want your engine hotter for high RPM driving sprints highway trips to help the heat transfer to your transmission and exterior components so they don't heat up too quickly either.

Engine wearing happens mostly when the engine is cold or the engine is overheating. When the temp is cold pumped engine oil doesn't flow well through block drillings and heads causing the engine components to wear. Now in overheating situation the engine oil is thinner and can't protect engine components well, certain parts will melt and would cause a water pump casket break. Overheating is a result of over stressing the engine or having not efficient radiator.

Warm engine oil provides the best protection for engine components. To answer your question having the AC ON while idling will hurt the engine if the engine can't maintain a recommended operating temperature, no cold weather can stop an engine from overheating without a radiator system.

So yes, idling with AC will hurt your engine but only if your vehicle doesn't have an efficient radiator system, such as an older model vehicles. Not sure if I can name vehicles models here without being dragged to court. Worth mentioning new car models AC is battery powered. Over heating is basically what would cause the engine to wear quicker. If you can avoid that, then doesn't matter if the car is running at highway speed or idling. On a completely different note True, we Vermonters do that a lot in wintertime - leave the vehicle running while we dash into a grocery store so the steering wheel isn't covered in frost when we return - but it IS illegal, and it IS prosecutable.

What happens if someone jumps into your vehicle and makes off with it? You'd likely be found nearly as culpable as the thief. A running car is a blatant invitation to theft. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.

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