How long to warm up a 10 year old Boxster?

[Smallblock454]

There are different aspects on warming up an engine.

1. Catalysators: The had to warm up fast, because else they can not work (environment aspect)

2. Water temperature and pressure: It is good to warm up an engine in general. There hould not be very warm and very cold spots. Because of the very big water reservoir of the Boxster engine it takes time to comletely warm up the system. Water pressure is low on idle. Better is to have a little higher revs - 2.000 - 2.500 rpm.

If you have a water pre-heating system you can warm up the whole engine. This will really save fuel and prevent the engine from wear.

3. Oil temperature an pressure: The oils needs to get fast everywhere when staring the engine. The viscosity of oil can help to do that. No oil circulation means maximum wear. That's why they use 0W oils which are very thin at low temps. Also you'll have less oil pressure at idle. So it's better to start the engine and drive away at low rpms - let's say 2.000-2.500.

Also best would be to build up oil pressure before starting the engine (ignition kill switch).

4. Technology. The engine engineering in the 986 was good in ti's time. Today technology, materials and engineering are much more refined in detail. But that doesn't mean that the engine design is antique.

5. The real cold start is over at the moment the engine sparks and runs. Becuase than you have more than 500 degrees celsius in cylinders and exhaust.

My opinion: Start the engine, put seatbelts on and drive away at lower rpms and don't push the engine.

Regards
Markus

[Giller]

Originally Posted by Timco

Why you hate the Earth, bro??

+1 Hilarious!

[99 Boxcutter]

Originally Posted by JFP in PA

Mike-

All EPA CAFE ratings include cold starts, and according to the CAFE rules, the OEM has to outline the methodology used to obtain the claimed mileage for the owner in the manual. Starting the car and letting it warm up obviously produces zero miles of travel for several min. of engine running time, which over the life of the car will lower its actual achieved miles per gallon of fuel consumed. Simple arithmetic.

Over the life of my business, I have had multiple opportunities to rebuild engines for customers that I subsequently had to look into years later. Interestingly, engines that are always warmed before driving showed less bearing scuffing and tended to have better looking cylinder walls after nearly equivalent miles.

As you know, I have also both owned and crewed on various race cars over the years, and we never allowed the engines to be pushed without a full warm up. Several cars, in fact, used outside systems to circulate warmed coolant before the engines were even fired to reduce cylinder wall and bearing scuffing. Many years ago, a then prominent engine builder (now deceased) ran cell dyno runs on engines that were always kept warm vs. units that were cold started and then warmed up before making power runs. The engines that were perpetually kept warm consistently produced more power for longer periods than the ones that were cold started and warmed. When torn down, the always warm engines again showed less component wear as well. He attributed the differences to the dimensional stability of the engine's that were kept warm, and the additional wear on the cold start engines to dimensional shift processes that take place during the warm up cycles.

Thanks for the thorough explanation.
I actually asked this question on Yahoo of all places and got laughed at by KungFooMaster69 who said "how old r u 85? star it and drove of"

Interestingly, my mom taught me to warm up the car when I was 8 years old and I have been doing it ever since out of habit. Last week I decided to put the "start and drive" method to the test and my Boxster got mad at me and started revving like a little hamster was pressing the gas pedal so that was the last time I do that.

[kk2002s]

So after a little re-think and some thought to JFP's input I timed things out before a Christmas present 2 1/2 hour drive
Timed things out
90 seconds for SAP to stop running
Approx. 3 mins for warm air to begin blowing (It was 55 degrees out)

So I have always waited till SAP stopped and a few easy 2K revs before driving
So waiting for a little warm air to blow is really not much more than my typical warmup