Parking Garage Nonsense

[ambimammular]

He has a house, too. He throws extra at the mortgage each month (at least in the summer/ fall). And I know he's already paid off some of his large equipment. He's not working in the oil fields, but he does well doing projects for the state/ game and fish dept.

I can't expect him to save the way I would, but I was pretty proud of him until I heard about this camper.

[Guses]

Ford Crown Vics considered one hour of idling to be like 33 miles of wear. I'm sure it varies between cars, but idling a car for a half hour is not free in terms of wear and tear. Of course, it's less than driving said half hour, but it's not free.

Thanks Gimp, that's more than I would have thought, it implies that wear and tear is more than the cost of gasoline.

It makes sense though, I know lots of fleet vehicles that have running hours and odometers, once they hit a certain amount of hours the motor is shot, a vehicle with 50,000 miles can have a motor worse than one driven 300,000 miles. I'm sure fleet managers have the conversion at their finger tips for running hours to miles for motor wear.

The companies I know of need to run the motors as they won't start in the extreme cold otherwise. Its built into the operational cost of the company, just another cost of doing business in the northern oil fields.

The heavy machinery I drove was the same way, it was the running hours that mattered, not the distances. Idling was sometimes harder than operating due to the performance curve of the motor, it was assumed people were working and not idling so they designed them to be optimal while actually performing.

Out in North Dakota, Haliburton had an F-150 with 50 miles on it that was brought into the dealership. The oil was so dirty that it was sludge. Obviously, the engine was shot. It had been running on a well site for many, many hours. When the oil change light came on, people cancelled it because, hey, the odometer only had 50 miles. An extreme case but still.

Also, I don't buy the .2 to .5 gallon and hour idling numbers. I bet it is closer to .75 gallons. Either way, it seems like a waste of money to warm up your car for very long.

You can "not buy" it all you want, but until you provide a data point substantiated by something other than feelings it doesn't mean anything. The data point I provided was determined by people using a ScanGyage tool hooked up to the OBD-II port.

My small 5 cyl. motor idles at 3-4 L/hour (0.75-1 gallon/hour). I imagine a larger motor consumes more while idling.

But all that is beside the point, it's not the individual instance that matters it's the collective waste when taken together.

It's like someone that leaves the door open on their fridge while they cook dinner. It's only a few more bucks a year but it's still wasteful and unnecessary (and stupid).


---edit

I also live in a very cold climate and I think it's silly to idle for more time than it takes to scrape off the car.