Car Myth Busters #23: Warm up your engine before driving By Frank-Ling / Mar 12, 2014 share Facebook Twitter Google + LinkedIn Pinterest Email Share... By Frank LingThis car myth has been around for a long time and still persists as the living truth among some car owners.The theory behind letting your car idle for a few minutes, especially during the cold winter months, is that the car needs extra time to circulate the oil in the engine, and allow for the internal parts to reach proper operating temperature.So the reasoning goes that if you just drive off without the proper warm up period, you’re putting stress on the engine and this could possibly damage it. But is this true?Where this came fromBack in the day when cars were less complicated creatures and all that was under the hood was the engine and other simple mechanical parts, drivers would just fill it up with oil and gas, and off they went.The warm up period advice probably started because motor oil, at the time, was single grade, and not the multigrade wonders of today. Because the oil was thicker, the extra time idling the car helped the oil to “loosen” up during very cold weather.Why it’s not necessaryIf anything, idling your car will actually take longer to warm it up than if you just drove it off after a few seconds. The heat generated during idle is smaller than if the car is running normally down the road.But modern cars warm up almost immediately and also need to be driven to warm up the catalytic converter, the transmission, and wheel bearings. If your car is standing still, these parts won’t get the necessary warm up.Save gasWarming up cars wastes gas because during the few minutes your car is stationary and idling, you aren’t moving anywhere. These minutes could be used for going somewhere instead of nowhere.Some environmental study groups also believe that idling cars on cold days produce more pollutants because the catalytic converters take longer to reach operating efficiency and can’t be effective until they do.Driving a car off immediately, instead of idling, gets the converter up to speed quicker, and this means less garbage being pumped into the air.So during cold weather, get in the car, start it, and just drive it off.Sources: Wondergressive.com, cracked.com