Never Let Your Car Idle - YouTube

rev up your engines, today I'll give you the ultimate answer of why it's bad to

let your car idle a lot now cars are made to drive you down the road so

they're designed to be moving to have airflow over the engine and transmission

they're not designed to just sit there like say the air conditioner in your

house it just sits there and cools the house now of course it's not gonna

instantly destroy your car if you sit there for 10-15 minutes at a railroad

track only especially if it's a newer vehicle it's more insidious it can

damage things over time the other year in Danville Virginia they found out that

they had sixteen thousand dollars of damage to the police cars that they had

to fix because they were sitting there idling and the plastic parts were

starting to melt and break realize plastic is not that good with heat and I

know that for a fact because take BMW it makes really crappy plastic parts here

in Houston where it's hot they crack like mad I seen where the intakes cracks

everything cracks from heat and of course if you have a vehicle that's an

older vehicle and things are starting to go bad anyways you're stressing the

cooling system the transmission the engine by sitting there idling for a

really long time you notice if you see police at events they'll open the hood

a little to leave vents so the heat can escape better because when you're

driving down the road all that heat of the engine just doesn't sit there and

build up air is blowing through the radiator it's blowing it back through

it's cooling it actually none of the car if you just sit there and idle for a

long length of time especially if you have your car in drive if it's an

automatic that's straining the transmission it's now engaged cuz it's

in Drive that starts to get hot and guess how the transmission gets cool now

the transmission down here is somewhat cooled by air going over it as you're

moving but mainly there's cooler lines and where do they go they go to the

bottom of the radiator and there's a chamber in the bottom of the radiator

that's the transmission cooler transmission fluid goes through it and

it uses the radiator to cool it down now you might think hey the radiator gets

hot well transmission fluid gets a lot hotter than the radiator fluid

that has fans blowing air so that helps to cool it and if you're just sitting

there with your car and drive stop for 15 minutes or something like that

all that heats gonna build up more it's gonna strain your cooling system so if

you do have to idle put it in neutral because if you put it in neutral then

the transmission isn't then driving engaged and it builds up much less heat

that way make sure your cooling fans are working correctly

start the car and turn the a/c on full blast there got a cooling fan make sure

that's fitting that what's being into that one space because let's say one fan

is working in one is it's gonna make it overeat over time especially when it's

idling and recently I read in Minneapolis they made a law that they

can't even make anymore drive-through businesses can't build any new ones

restaurants thanks whatever they're not allowing any new drive-ins to be made

because they did a study and found out how long people are letting these things

idle and how much fuel was being wasted and here's being polluted most people

want their cars to be around a long time so it isn't a good idea to let them sit

and idle it's just not no I know people probably gonna call me out say Scotty

you're hypocrite you probably let them idle all the time or you work a time

well yes I do but I also have this my big air fan literally it's called big

air I stick in front of the car turned on full-blast and they're put in front

of a running car now if you see guys working on cars

letting them idle a long time and they don't put a giant fan in front of it hey

they're not good mechanics it's keeping the engine cool plus it's also blowing

all the noxious vapors downstream so I don't have to breathe them in now

realize the number one damage caused there in your car is heat whether it be

heat from the engine heat from the transmission getting hotter as its

spinning they're just sitting there idling but it's in Drive like I said if

you put it in neutral or park that's going to get rid of some of the heat to

transmissions put not at least I realized that modern cars a very high

pressure cooling system when I was young mechanic they had low pressure some of

only had five psi they a giant radiators and they didn't need a high pressure

because the radiators are so big they could take the heat with lower pressure but

today some cars have 25 psi pressure cooling system higher the pressure the

more strain on the systems as it ages and things start to either leak or

Springs where and the cap doesn't hold the pressure right you don't want to

stress a system like that sitting for 20 minutes with your car idling and drive

especially here in Houston where hey it was 105 days in a row this summer I mean

let's face it if you're driving a standard transmission and he's sitting

there waiting you don't push down the clutch and put it in first gear and

leave it with all that strain pushing on it put it in neutral take your foot off

the clutch then you put in the clutch and put it in so at least put your car

in neutral or park if you're planning on sitting for a long time and you just

have to have that car running now let's say you live up north and it's freezing winter

well don't learn it idle isn't really gonna hurt anything if it's so cold

outside the cold is gonna dissipate any of the heat you create but even in the

summer I've been in Wisconsin when it was 99 degrees it can get hot there too

so you don't want to strain a car in hot weather by idling it and drive for

extended periods of time because I've had customers with really old cars and

when they let them idle too long they bring him in here I could see the

catalytic converters they were actually glowing red it got so hot that they were

glowing red the metal got red-hot because I say you got an older car the

catalytic converters purpose is to burn on dirt hydrocarbons and does that by

burning them up and get real hot your engines old and it puts out a lot of

hydrocarbons and it's burning it up it's gonna get so hot that it can get red-hot

I've seen that of course that's dangerous so you got a really old car

hey my advice shut the thing off if you're gonna be sitting there for 5 10 15

minutes don't let it sit there idling cuz if the

cats get that hot hey I've seen them start grass fires

nice just you're out in the country don't get so hot it'll start the grass

on fire that's one of the reasons they put those heat shields on them

originally to cover them all up but a lot of the modern ones don't have such

big heat shields because it's too cumbersome there's no space and warm up so

they get hot and if something gets in there

and it starts a fire just cuz you're sitting there idling too long and that

was one of the original problems with catalytic converters when they first

came out they're finding that they're going to the national forests and stuff

and they could start fires because they were just getting too hot they hadn't

hadn't perfected you out they didn't have the materials perfected and they

ran way too hot and the original ones didn't have any heat shields on them at

all and they often did start fires now odds are you're not gonna start a fire

just sitting there idling but you do where your transmission engine out

prematurely and the catalytic converter you can spend all that money to fix

something that wouldn't happen if you would have just shut the engine off I

remember a customer of mine years ago she towed

her car and I said well you blew your engines it shot what happened she said

well it was overheating when I was on a highway but you know it was a big

traffic jam and I was only 15 minutes from home so I just kept driving it but

then it got into the H and then it stopped running well it's not that

direct idling but over time it can do the same kind of damage if you do it all

the time so do your car a favor and don't sit idle in it for extended

periods of time unless of course you have an electric car then it doesn't

matter cuz when you're sitting there the motor isn't doing anything the only

thing that's working would be the electric air conditioner that runs off

the battery and that's cooling you off but it's made to do that, scotty just gave

you a good reason for buying an electric car something I normally don't do so, if

you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring

that Bell