to warm-up or not

[Alex]

/merged with a good warmup thread from not long ago

[GeorgiaHooligan]

Listen to the bike, she'll tell you how she likes it.

[austinm911]

I've ridden without using the choke and i've been fine. Maybe a little bogging here an there but never a problem. I normally turn the bike on, choke it, put my gear on, hop on, choke off and ride away.

[Tony B]

Originally Posted by phr3ek

running the bike with choke on is a bad idea too
i forgot the reason why though

The fuel in the rich mixture tends to wash oil from the cylinder bores

[kyrider]

A guy that worked for me last summer works at his dads cycle shop and he said he would go over the whole bike for$10 and see if it need valve or carb job etc.

She runs good once I let her warm up.

Just used to how my ATV's do.

[CynicalC]

The idea behind warming a vehicle up is to get the oil flowing and up to operating temperature. Well with modern synthetic oils, this is not needed. Almost immediately, the oil will be lubricating and protecting everything as well as it's able to at any temperature.

CN: Anything over 30 seconds is unnecessary. Hooray for advancements in oil technology.

Along the same lines, people who drive their car hard and then let it idle to "cool off" before shutting down are morons too.

[Tony B]

Originally Posted by CynicalC

Along the same lines, people who drive their car hard and then let it idle to "cool off" before shutting down are morons too.

.......unless it's an old air-cooled VW ......

[Alex]

Originally Posted by CynicalC

Along the same lines, people who drive their car hard and then let it idle to "cool off" before shutting down are morons too.

Unless it's a turbo. Even now, car manuals still say to let the engine run for a minute or two if you just finished high speed driving and had no time where the turbo wasn't up to speed. The water-cooled turbo designs now don't need the 5+ minutes that the older designs used to, but it's still not a great idea to have it up to max operating speed and temp, and shut it off immediately afterwards.

[CynicalC]

Originally Posted by Alex

I edited the poll, and to do so I had to wipe the old answers. Sorry about that.

Weird. I'm sure I was able to edit poll results as a vb admin before. Maybe they removed that sneaky feature

Originally Posted by Alex

Unless it's a turbo. Even now, car manuals still say to let the engine run for a minute or two if you just finished high speed driving and had no time where the turbo wasn't up to speed. The water-cooled turbo designs now don't need the 5+ minutes that the older designs used to, but it's still not a great idea to have it up to max operating speed and temp, and shut it off immediately afterwards.

I could be wrong but I could have sworn I even read in my cars manual that it wasn't necessary, and I've read countless threads frowning on the use of turbo timers on cars with water cooled turbos. Do I think it would hurt? Probably not, except for the wasted gas. But I don't think it's necessary either until I read something that convinces me otherwise.

Hardly enough to be any kind of proof, but I put over 50k HARD miles on my last turbo, and it had no cracks or shaft play at all when it came off. Just my personal experience.

[Alex]

I don't think turbo timers are necessary anymore. But - there is wording in the manual for our Mazdaspeed3 like what I posted above, basically advising that if you just came off the highway or any other environment where the turbo was at speed, to not shut the car off immediately without a short delay or a few miles of normal use. I do think that production turbos have gotten phenomenally reliable compared to a few years back.

Originally Posted by CynicalC

Weird. I'm sure I was able to edit poll results as a vb admin before. Maybe they removed that sneaky feature

You can edit the poll results. But in this case, the prior poll options were a little limiting, and when I added more options the original few votes no longer made sense.

[YORCHI]

Originally Posted by scotty

This is how I do it:
1. Start bike
2. Put on jacket
3. Put on helmet
4. Ride

The bike maybe runs for 1 min before I take off. I don't need the choke to warm it up or keep it running. Now, the winter time is a whole different story... Choke on, start, rev, rev, start, rev, rev, start, ect...

I do the same but with a few differences...

If it's the first time starting the bike that day I do the following...

1) Start the bike with as little choke as possible if needed
2) Move wife's car because I use her car as a way to block the bike in and prevent theft
3) Put on all gear (all the time)
4) Get on drive

If I've driven it already I just turn it on and put my gear on then get on and go.

[WAGESLAVEesc]

I drive mine nice and easy as soon as I start it up. From the ninja 250 faq, this has me convinced:

"Engines warm drastically faster when under load than when under no load (idling). The evils of idling are ultra low oil pressure at a time when the oil is at its thickest and doesn't flow very well. That means that right after starting is the point where you have the worst lubrication. By riding you're forcing the oil to move more and provide lubrication to the points that aren't bathed in oil (think heads)." - http://faq.ninja250.org/wiki/Warming_up_your_engine

[mrlmd]

I had the same advice from Detroit Diesel on a turbocharged engine for my boat, about running it for a minute or two at idle speed before you turn it off. But in all reality, how many degrees is the turbo, or the engine, going to cool off in another minute? Seems the fastest way to cool it is to shut it off. It probably has more to do with making sure it is properly lubricated with oil than dropping the temp a few degrees.

[jamesio]

I usually walk out to my bike with all my gear on except helmet and gloves. I'll usually stick the key in, turn the engine on then let it idle while I put my gloves and helmet on and zip up my jacket. Then I'll get on and pull the clutch lever in for a sec to wet it up, maybe one or two lil throttle blips. Then I'm off

[Alex]

They cool off a tremendous amount in just a minute or two; it's the water-cooling that is circulating while the turbo is idle that pulls away a ton of heat. The turbo is relatively small, and the cooling system for it is large enough to be a very significant heat sink. The goal is to get the turbo and all of its parts cool enough that it won't coke the oil that lubricates it. Once it's below a certain temp, it's fine.

[Xoulrath]

[choneofakind]

I only choke/warmup when it's dead cold. other than that it's just hit the starter and go, then take it easy on the rpms until it's fully up to temp

I usually set the choke so it idles around 2000-2500 rpm and put my gear on. This gives it about a minute, maybe 2 while I futz around with my helmet and ear plugs etc. then I ride away with the choke on and it usually doesn't need the choke any more after about a mile, so I turn it off. Untill the temp guage reads up to the second white line, I keep my rpm's below about 6k. then it's happy normal riding

[mrlmd]

Are you saying that when the turbo is not spinning, the engine is cooling it off using the engine's own cooling system? The turbo gets hotter than 180-210 degrees and the engine cools it off?
By and large, the quickest way to cool off an engine would be to turn it off and stop generating heat. The cooling system actually maintains proper operating temperature, allowing the engine to warm up to it's designed parameters, and to remove excess heat to keep it from overheating. The thermostat controls that by regulating coolant flow. The cooling system doesn't cool it off.
The cooling system doesn't change the temp of the exhaust gas going through the turbo either. Turbos that has their own interccoolers are to cool the temp of the air blown into the engine to make it more dense = more air.

[Alex]

You're right, in that the quickest way to cool off a normally aspirated engine whose cooling system is working normally, is to just turn if off. But a turbo engine is a bit different. The operating temp of the turbo itself can be many hundreds of degrees warmer than the oil temp or the water temp. That's why just about all modern ones are now water-cooled directly. Running that water-cooling system for a short while cools the turbo much more than it would by just shutting off the engine immediately after running the turbo hard. The cooling system for the turbo is different than the intercooler. The intercooler is for a denser charge. The water-cooled functionality of the turbo is to keep the turbo itself cool.