To Run or Not to Run Dog Days of Winter

[Thumperbird]

Wondering what you all think these days in terms of running an FE once or twice over the course of winter?
I ran my stroker the other day for 30 minutes or so, used to do it way back in the day with an old 390 I had.
Waited for a bit warmer day (low 30's) just to make it easier, no chokes on the twins make it a bit fussy for the first minute or so.

Do you guys run your stuff at all?  Worth it or not, harmful?

Just curious what others think on these dog days of a covid winter.

Thanks.

[plovett]

I think it is worth it if you can run it for an extended period of time.  Can you take a 30 minute trip?  That would be ideal to get things used, lubed, and the moisture burned out. 

paulie

[Barry_R]

I run mine for 30 minutes or so every couple weeks.
Wait for a day when the weather is at least into the 30s...

[RJP]

Paulie nailed it. Just running it in the shop/garage will not allow the engine to build enough heat to burn off the moisture created by just firing the engine and letting it idle or even at high idle. The engine needs to be under load for it to fully warm up. If you live in an area thats gets damn cold I believe it would be better to just wait until you can drive the car as other components besides the engine will benefit by driving it for an extended period.  A good freeway romp for 15-20 miles [or more] at 60-70 mph would be what I would try for.  I live in an area that seldom get colder than about 40 F so I leave the cars in the shop until I can put some miles on each of them. each drive is about 10-12 miles one way and the on-ramp I use for my return trip allows for a good 5k+ rpm romp going thru the gears getting up to speed... It is a long on-ramp

[Heo]

Take mine out for a run now and then when they have not salted the roads
Drove it for a daily driver last winter well into Febuari sometimes -30 centigrades
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rpsq4aTkl8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHH-LxbMTrI
The key is to run it so the oil get up to temperature to vapor of the water from
condensation

[machoneman]

Salt is the killer, Here in suburban Chicago, we were salt-free until the first 'big' snowfall although it ended up being only about 2-3 inches. Point is, from then on, our streets and highway are Mortonized (Morton Salt) for the duration. The cars never leave the garage thereafter.

I spin the engine over a few times to relieve spring pressure/oil the top end a tad. Start both up once in awhile for an easy 20+ minutes. Agree though they don't get nearly as hot as I'd like. The Moroso oil pan heater works well on the '70 Stang for fast starts. The '88 Fox 5.0 is just started up and left to run.

Spring can NEVER come fast enough here!

[Heo]

When it is cold enough the salt just makes it freeze harder and more slippery
and they just salt the highway so when it is a nice winter day i sometimes go for a ride
on the small backroads otherwise i store it in a heated garage

[Gaugster]

Run them if you have time to get the oil temp over the boiling point of water. Like above, I'm in the suburbs of Chicago and once the salt hits I don't even consider driving around. Occasionally we'll have a rainy winter that washes any salt away but those are the exception.

[hvywrench]

I have my highboy pickup on jackstands in the garage for the winter and about once a month I'll start it and let it run in 4x4 for about a half hour. Did it yesterday, actually.
It comes up to 180 water temp, but not hot enough to burn off the bad stuff like a good drive would do.
I do it mostly to keep the driveline and auto trans lubricated and keep everything splashed in oil.

[GerryP]

I read about getting the engine hot enough to boil off water and contaminants in the oil.  I used to take that at face value in spite of things I knew that were different from that.  First, if you keep ice in your freezer, you might notice that the ice cubes shrink.  That is sublimation, where the ice cube is evaporating without changing state to a liquid.  If you put a glass of water on the counter and check on it day to day, you'll notice the height of the water is going down.  It's evaporating.  I am also aware that when it comes to humidity, the hotter the air, the more water it can hold.

From those observations, I determined that you don't need 212-degrees (100c) at sea level for water in any state to evaporate.  It happens in the frigid environs of you freezer, on your counter top, and in your oil pan.  The water won't emulsify in the oil pan.  It will separate out.  In the immediate, if there is some abnormally high amount of water, it will sink to the bottom of the oil pan, but through evaporation, it will migrate through the oil, into the space above and out to atmosphere.  I've read where the combustion byproducts can mix with water and form acids that can eat engine bearings.  I've never read how that happens.  And it's not because I haven't looked.  Maybe it is out there somewhere.  I know water can't mix with gas, oil, or other petroleum products, so I don't know what that water is mixing with that forms an acid.  And water can't turn into something else unless it's subjected to a lot of heat and pressure.  And the water won't displace oil that might be in place with a hydrodynamic bearing.  I don't know, but it just doesn't seem necessary to get the engine fully up to temperature and operating that way long enough for something to occur.

I have a car that I don't drive but maybe once every couple of weeks for five or 10 miles or so.  It's a 2008 Saturn Sky Red Line.  I've owned it since new.  I had a Blackstone oil analysis done last year out of curiosity.  It showed a tiny trace of fuel.  Absolutely nothing to be concerned over.  No water.  No antifreeze.  No insoluables, like soot.  I can post that report up if you'd like just so you can see for yourself.  My point being that this is a car that by Internet knowledge should be all blowed up because I'm not doing anything the Internet says I should be doing.  I don't run it long enough, or hard enough to purge all that nastiness out of the crankcase.

I would add that the real downside to just running the engine in the garage when it could be out on the road is that it won't put a smile on your face.  Okay, you want to avoid salt.  And yes, with cold roads, you can't lean into the throttle since the tires just spin.  And if you are like me, the heater isn't plumbed in so you don't get any comfort.  There is one real downside and that is for flat tappet cams, you might not have enough engine speed to properly lubricate the cam.  So make sure you vary the RPM enough to keep the cam lubed.

[427John]

The combustion byproducts include CO and CO2 which can combine with water to form carbonic acid,we actually have to maintain a morpholine or amine residual in condensate to neutralize the effects of it in steam plants.As far as the water sitting at the bottom of an oil pan evaporating that just doesn't happen when there is a layer of oil sitting on top of it.And as soon as you start the engine  the water will become mechanically emulsified with the oil,until you shut it off and let sit long enough to separate again,just like shaking a bottle of oil and vinegar.But any water emulsified with the oil stays where ever happens to have been when the engine was shut off  and when it separates again any carbonic acid in the water is able to attack any machined surfaces it may be in contact with,keep in mind this happening on a minute scale and is not some sort of catastrophic corrosion so the bottom line is do what makes you most comfortable and has worked best for you in the past.I don't think I've heard any horror stories where someone has let their car sit for 3-5 months in a garage and went out and it was locked up or smoked chronically after starting.   

[plovett]

you can see the moisture in your oil just by looking under your breather cap.  When I only take short trips for a while in the winter, it is foamy with moisture.  If I take one longer drive, the moisture is evaporated off.  No one mentioned an exact temperature it needs to do that.  Certainly it is a combination of temperature and time that does it.  It can only be good to get it out of the oil.

pl

[Heo]

And a modern engine with a working PCV gets rid of the moisture quicker
I can tell a story. I know a woman that rebuilt a 67 Camaro under several years
she started up the fully rebuilt 327 but aborted after a few minutes due to a
leaking fuelpump  car became sitting for a few years in a heated garage.
she fixed that, run in the cam. And she called me and asked if i could come
and check the preload on the valves beacuse something was not right.
Mecanical lifter on a hyudralic cam, I noticed the oil was loocking strange
Brownish, muddy. when she lifted the intake to change lifters the lifter valley
was covered in rust, coarse rust like sand that had spread in the whole engine
took out the oilpump and bearings scratched a few cylinders

Another friend bought a suposed 283 with a rodknock that have been outside
for years, had a couple of  liters of water in the sump Looked like new in the
crankcase. He checked a couple of bearings, they where fine so he put it back together
and started it. Knock was from two valves that had a couple of milimeters play
due to sloppy adjusting nuts. Was a Rebuilt 327 with forged pistons and Mec cam
runs fine to this day so it is a lottery

[cammerfe]

427 John's info above is certainly correct. And there's more to it than just that. The air that is drawn in and used in the combustion process is mostly nitrogen (almost 80 percent) and during the complicated activity of combustion, some of the H2O will combine with some of the nitrogen and become nitric acid---and a bit more will become other sorts of acids as well. So you will have a 'soup' of fairly nasty stuff in your oil until the oil gets to enough of a temperature to drive off the glop as vapor of one sort or another.

You don't have to get clear to 212 Degrees Fahrenheit to get rid of the contaminants. Just as a pan of gently warmed water on a stove will evaporate much faster than that pan of water at room temperature, so the heat you put into the oil will have the various compounds in the water as well as the water itself acting much more vigorously and escaping into the atmosphere. And that's good.

KS

[Rory428]

I prefer to spray Fogging Oil down the carb and let my old stuff hibernate for the winter, until springtime, when I can change the oil, prime the oiling system, and take  the car out for  nice long drive on salt free roads. I may rotate the crank now and then to relax the open valves, or with a larger cam, back the rockers off for the winter. If it`s sitting outside, for quite a while, I will also either spray the fogging oil into the spark plug holes, or engine oil if it is sitting for more than a few months. I don`t really consider an oil testing of a low mile, late model EFI 4 banger is the same as a 50+ year old carburated hot rod type engine.

[427John]

Fogging with layup is definitely an option and is very popular with marine engines in my area.They probably are subject to moisture as much as anything out there,sitting there under an engine cover with a little residual water laying in the bilge underneath it.

[427John]

I can even see merit in starting and running the engine for a short period if its done frequent enough to keep the inside coated with oil like every few days,but I would tend to think that starting the engine without letting it come up to full temp including the oil and then letting it sit for weeks or months would be the least desirable practice.

[cleandan]

There are so many variables to this question that most of the "proof" is anecdotal, not scientific.

Here is but one example of what I am talking about concerning putting your car away.
Your car, with an older carbed engine, is in otherwise excellent condition.
You drive it regularly during the good months, and put it way for the bad months.

1) Drive in, park, and walk away...change oil in spring when you get it out again.
2) Drive in, change oil, run a bit to circulate and put away.
3) Drive in, change oil, put away.
4) Drive in, change oil, fog cylinders, release valvetrain pressure.
5) Drive in, change oil, put car in storage bag with dessicant system in place.
6) Drive in, change oil, put car in extra garage that is at ambient temps.
7) Drive in, change oil, put car in heated garage but just above freezing.
Drive in, change oil, put car in well heated garage that is also a working shop so it changes temps radically once in a while when the doors are left open due to some other reason.
9) Park open, with a fan cicrulating air around car.
10) Park, covered, with fan.
11) Park, tarped, with no fan....I think you get the idea.

All of this has very different results depending where you live, your storage situation, air quality where you live, humidity level, temp changes through the season, construction of your storage area, and other factors.

EVERY one of these situations are perfromed by some car guy every season, with the results being, it worked, because there are no significant issues causing the owner to question his "good" storage techniques.
This cements his good storage techniques as just that, good, so they are told to others because hey, Dave knows his car stuff. What does Dave do? I'll do that too.

There are many, many, many variables leading to the unique end result. Each could be done better from a true scientific viewpoint, but the current methods are also not "wrong" because they work good enough.

Add to that the age old, "It's what my dad used to do" or other legend and lore type thinking that keeps old ideas going for no other reason than that is what was done, and it gets even more mired and less clear about the "best" methods.

Lots of the methods seem to revolve around the engine alone too.
Never mind the differential and axle bearings.
Never mind the transmission or any suspension parts, or wheel bearings...etc.
Pay no mind to the exhaust pipes and mufflers....Nope, you have to heat the oil to a certain temp to boil off water.....You know the story.

[machoneman]

I think the makeup of the garage (if garaged) does make a significant difference. The floor material counts as well.

In my attached, unheated garage here in a Chicago 'burb, the temps rarely go down lower that 45F of so. With a concrete flow w/o any cracks, a standard 2-car wide door and added-on flexy seals on the big door I've seen zero interior engine rust or even moisture. Having just done a head/cam swap (thanks Brent Lykins!) on the '70 Mach 1, after 26 years in this same garage the cylinder walls, valley, etc. were in perfect shape. Point is, the condition of the place you store your car(s) has the biggest impact in my book over how well the engine and car survive even brutal winters.

On a side note, having a heated garage is really bad news IF one pulls in a grocery getter next to your fun ride and IF it has salt/snow on it. Have seen too many cars garaged this way that succumbed to rust, rust easily forming in a wet, warm environment. Unless one can rinse off that salt BEFORE entering the garage, you're not helping the car at all. And oh, good luck with rinsing off salt in your driveway at near freezing temps!   



   

[Jb427]

I have the opposite problem here 40+ deg C 100+ deg F summers

[Falcon67]

I run the door car about once every month, just run it in the shop.  But this is Texas and while it snowed last week it was also 70F yesterday.  Also, it never gets below high 40s in the shop in winter and I can easily put it in the 60s in an hour or so.  So I just wait for a good windy day with a little warmth.  No problem getting engine temp when you have manual control over the electric fans and such.  For the dragster, it gets fogged down after every race.  For winter, It gets fogged down good, plugs pulled and cylinders fogged and spun, carb tore down and cleaned, fuel system pumped down and changed over to gas, and capped off.  Battery on a maintainer and will spin the motor over once in a while. 

We need to sell the old F-350.  It sits outside and I just start it every 30 days or so.  Maybe take it around the big block/circle.  Been doing that for over a year now and it hasn't bothered it at all. 

[fryedaddy]

i have owned my fe comet for 35+ years and i have driven it year round,especially these last 5 years.but im on my 4th fe in this comet also.unless its broke my car never sits over 1 or 2 weeks and thats because of snow,other than that since im retired now and i dont drive much farther than 20 miles from home,i drive my comet everywhere,nearly everyday.

[6667fan]

Had Fairlane out two days ago. Air temp was mid thirties. Got water up to temp, don’t have an oil temp gauge. Normally would not get a car out this time of year but there was a rainstorm last week that took care of an earlier road treatment. Today there was an inch of snow so the town threw down some blue/green stuff.
Good thing I chose to mix the fluids the other day. Did not even put hood on though it does not make much difference anyways. Engine has a 192* thermostat and I have not been able to get it any warmer than that even in heat of summer.
I would never just idle it to warm it up. Summer or not it needs a load on it.

[Thumperbird]

Thanks for all the input, reminded of lots of variables for all but it sounds like general position of most owners of street(ish) cars is run them once a month or so and drive if you can.  I can't take it out on the road but I do cycle the trans thru RND a couple times.

The older I get the more I dislike 5 month long winters although this one is a bit more mild temerpature wise.

Thanks.