RE: [VintageLambo] Re: winter idling

I"d bet that you can probably leave the engine sitting for a year, take it apart, mic every single part, and find no change to the engine that wouldn"t require an electron microscope to detect. Will it run very well after sitting a year. No, but that has more to do with the carbs and old gas than the engine itself. Leave the car a three or four months, then drive it a couple of days in succession and it will be running like new (or at least as well as when you parked it). What do we fear by not starting it? Here are some suggested issues: -Some change in a dimension, such as the brunelling of a bearing, contraction of a valve spring. Unlikely. Shell bearings need a very long time to change shape statically. Decades, probably. Same with valve springs. Our springs are pretty stout, designed to prevent valve float at 7000 rpm or maybe even higher. Those springs will need the weight of the world to change shape. -Lack of lubrication, leading to corrosion of bearing surfaces, cylinder walls, valve faces, etc. Also unlikely unless moisture is somehow introduced in large quantities (leaving the plugs out while washing the engine, for example). The parts are so impregnated with oil that even if wiped dry by a rag they can sit around for years without rusting. When I bought my car seven years ago the original cast iron cylinder liners were in a box sitting on the floor of a garage for almost ten years. Since then they have sat in the musty basement of various houses with no particular attention paid to their upkeep. Their bores are as smooth as the day they came out of the engine. -Exposure to acids in used motor oil that can damage bearing faces, rings, valves stems, etc. I"d be more worried about that if we didn"t all change our oil at least once a year or use synthetic. -The aforementioned coolant issue: again, not as big a concern since we all religiously change our 5-year Dexcool every two years and used distilled water, right? -Fractionating of the gasoline with additive packages evaporating off, resulting in falling octane, build up of solids, etc. A legitimate concern but I don"t think quite as worrisome today with modern additive packages as it was 20 years ago. I don"t use additives such as lead substitute because it"s just a prescription for carb gumming. Downsides to cold-starting: -95 percent of all engine wear occurs in the first few seconds after ignition, so more cold starts equals more wear. -carbs permanently set to super-rich have an even harder time keeping fuel atomized in frigid air so condensation of fuel on the cylinder walls, increased ring wear resulting from rivulets of fuel washing away oil, and contamination of the oil are all more significant in the colder air. -Needless heatcycling of old seals, rubber, metals. If you"re going to put your car through a heat cycle you might as well get some enjoyment out of it. There"s only so many of those cycles in any given part. AR -----Original Message----- From: lamboguy [mailto:lambojambo@aol.com] Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 2:41 PM To: VintageLambo@yahoogroups.com Subject: [VintageLambo] Re: winter idling --- In VintageLambo@yahoogroups.com, "Robinson, Aaron" wrote: >I doubt that the wear and tear of weekly cold-starts and > resulting condensation from prolonged idling is offset by whatever benefit > is achieved by moving oil around. Yeah, good points Aaron.Frankly, I don"t have any experience with very drastic winters where you can"t actually drive the car. Still, I can"t see leaving the car for more than, say, two months without starting it.Do you think that is the "magic number?"There has got to be a point where the benefit of starting outweights the benefit of not, when you look at everything involved. Course, living in Los Angeles as I did changes the rules a bit. Even "dead of winter" starts typically ended up in a really nice dr