I've always heard it's bad to leave a car running for an extended period of time with out moving (or accelerating). Is this true? Why? How long can I sit in the running car (AC on) and have it not be detremental to the car's health (or mine)? Thanks.

 

I have no idea as to whether how detrimental it is to leaving the car in park for a long period of time, but i hate doing it. I hate when i pick up someone and they make me wait outside for 10 minutes, like my gf. :banghead:

 

but she'll only be 2 minutes

 

well i can think of a few things off the top of my head just trying to reason it. first off the cooling system, the radiator is not getting any wind. will this drive up the thermostat temp? i dunno i have never overheated from idle before. but it does say not to idle for long periods of time in almost all car manuals.

 

What caball88 said...if you're idling you aren't getting the cooling normally associated with moving. Plus, at idle RPM you don't have as high of oil pressure as you do compared to moving. With lower oil pressure and no cooling of the pan, the oil temp goes up which can be bad. In addition, no movement causes engine compartment temps to go up, making the natural dissapation of heat through the aluminum less efficient. It won't kill a motor, just makes it run a little warmer.

Typically this isn't an issue for FWD cars as they run electric fans so even when still you get some cooling. Sitting idle was more of a problem for motors with fans driven off the water pump pulley with a fan clutch like my old 5.0. If I sat in traffic, the combo of slow fan speed from idle plus not moving would sent my H2O temps up.

 

First off it burns gas which costs about $2 a gallon, hurts your pocket

Second think of the unnecessary pollutants that you are creating, hurts everones lungs

 

not even 2, she is almost dressed and only needs to do her hair. Should be like 1 minute

 

Cops leave their cars running and sitting still all the time!! Don't you love it when they waste taxpayer's money AND pollute the air at the same time?

 

With AC on + not moving(parked) = bad idea. If you have your windows down and the car on without AC, you could probably leave it on for a while without causing harm. Just dont leave AC and not move.

 

i remember one summer my friend was chilling in his car with the A/C on for like a couple of hours. it was like 90 degrees outside, when he put the car in drive and drove away there was nothing but black exhaust. it was a huge cloud of it. holy smokes look like something was on fire. so from that point on i never idled with the A/C on. plus his car went straight downhill from that point on.

 

The bad thing with the navi is that it takes a few seconds to boot up. So you sit there idling just waiting for the navi to come online before you enter that mysterious address you just don't know how to get to.

 

I will say that it is according to what car you have.

One time my mom went out in her Ford Crown Vic and was in a meeting for over 2 hours. When she came out, her car was running AND, she did not have another set of keys. SOOO, she calls me at my apartment as said could I go pick up her extra set of keys!! I drive the 30 minutes to her house and the 40 minutes to where she was and the car was still purring away. She opened up the car, put it in gear and drove away with no problem. Nothing went wrong with the car!! Like it was NORMAL to do this.....

 

I've been stucked in traffic for 1 hour! - what's the difference ?
I used to get bad traffic everyday for 5 years, and my car at the time never had a problem.