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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

You didn't let it warm up?

In the Yukon, it's critical you let your car warm up. A block heater, battery blanket and oil pan heater are all needed, but they're only heating the actual engine block.

Think about how cold the oil in the transmission and diffs are.. let alone everything else.

You also want to drive extremely smoothly and slowly for the first ~5 mins to let everything circulate and slowly warm up to running temp - sudden moves or turns tears apart CV joints, and destroys other rubber seals.

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These are aspects to driving vehicles most people do not even begin to need to think about.

Especially nowadays, I know that my 72 Chevy had a instructions for cold start (<32 I believe) on the back of the driver's visor which included idling for a few minutes. I've noticed people tend to turn their car on after getting situated but I still have a habit of turning it over as soon as I get in to let it warm up even though that car is, sadly, gone for now.

All the geegaws on a modern engine make it less important.

Hahaha.

Have you seen what engine oil looks like past -35C?

Butter. Same color, same consistency. You can cut and spread it with a knife. Those geegaws aren't helping there.

Also, there is a hell of a lot more in a vehicle that's sensitive to extreme cold than an engine.

Hohoho?

I said less for a reason. Most people don't have to worry about -35C. Cars start reliably down to fairly low temperatures, so they don't need to worry about it.

>Most people don't have to worry about -35C.

We're replying in a thread about someone trying to use a vehicle at -40C...

>Cars start reliably down to fairly low temperatures

Start? As the parent comment states, that's the least of your problems.

I replied to a comment that mentioned <32 Fahrenheit.

Sure, it may be less important, but I'd hate for someone to think that means it's majorly less important (in other terms, unimportant).. letting a car warm up in cold weather is good for it, regardless of innovations.

Most of the time it just wastes gas. Well, beyond making the cabin comfortable it just wastes gas.

My fave is when the wheels freeze to the ground; so when the noob guns it - since the truck seems reasonably warm, yet stuck - the drive shaft snaps. Depending which universal joint breaks, the flailing remains can cause impressive damage.

The tires are going to be "square" for the first twenty minutes anyway, so unless you really enjoy having the fillings shaken out of your teeth...

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