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Hi all; I currently have a daily round trip commute of just 13 miles/30 minutes. I worry that this may not be long enough to properly warm up my car's engine. At weekends I drive slightly more, at most 40-45 miles per day. Total: plus/minus 8,000 per year. The question is can I do anything to reduce wear and tear on the engine from these short trips. Thanks guys!
Edited by Pebble on 02/05/2013 at 15:05
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You're right to suspect short journeys from cold mean engine wear. In other words, it's lots of cold starts.
The standard advice would be to change the oil more frequently than the service schedule recommends. However, there seem to be people posting in the BR who disagree with this. (You know who you are.)
I would use a top spec oil, change it frequently and, on a long journey when fully warmed up, give it an Italian tune-up occasionally.
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You're not doing the engine or transmission any favours. An engine block heater and transmission sump heater, both powered from the mains electric will improve things immensely - obviously in winter but also in spring and autumn.
I subscribe to the theory of using 0W-nn oil to reduce wear during cold starts as it circulates much quicker than 10W-nn for instance - stick with whatever "nn" is recommended by the engine manufacturer though - many so-called "experts" will tell you that's rubbish but "BobIsTheOilGuy" in the USA and "Oilman" in the UK support and explain this theory.
You will need to change oil more frequently because the condensation/moisture that accumulates in the oil will need chance to evaporate off.
Using wider range multigrade usually means using fully synthetic - that together with more frequent changes will involve cost - but you didn't buy a Lincoln Town Car for it's low running costs did you!
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If you want to get really stuck in, fit engine/trans heaters and an oil pre-lubrication/pre-pressurisation kit. Does exactly what it says.
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One of the oil treatments containing Molybdenum Disulphide might be a good idea.
Reduces wear on cold start by coating all the bits with slippery stuff. I recall that one of the additive makers did a publicity stunt where they dosed a Renault 5 in Paris, ran it for a bit, drained the oil and then drove it without oil to Ma***ille.
Edit: Hmm. It would appear that Ma***ille is the French equivalent of Sc***horpe when it comes to daft filtering.....
Edited by TeeCee on 02/05/2013 at 15:54
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MolySlip isn't rated by experts, compared to the oils generally available nowadays - it's suggested that claims of running on empty sumps are fraudulent.
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Indeed it is far easier to run a car without oil than without water. Without water the car will seize very qusickly and it will take much longer without oil.
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What is a Lincoln Town car, if that is the OP's chariot? Sounds a USA vehicle perhaps.
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What is a Lincoln Town car, if that is the OP's chariot? Sounds a USA vehicle perhaps.
Correct--according to Wikipedia, America's largest car 15 years in a row. A massive, bloated beast seen at weddings and wherever a limousine is required. Anyway, as far as oil goes, manufacturer Ford recommends 5W-20, and I believe the oil currently in the car is synthetic. Owners' manual says change oil every 5,000 miles, but I'd be willing to do it more often if it'll benefit the long term durability of the engine. Oh, and somebody suggested an engine block heater: I have one, just haven't got round to installing it yet. Maybe now I'll get it done.
Edited by Pebble on 02/05/2013 at 17:10
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Pebble - if this was 1 April I would be calling it an April Fool.
13 miles and 30 minutes with a huge V8 engine will be enough I would have thought to get it fully warm without worrying about engine and oilwear. Especially at 5,000 miles oil changes.
Why worry?
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Why worry?
Simple--I want this car to go 20 years, if I can swing it. Here most Town Cars are used as commercial vehicles; taxis, limos, converted into hea***s, or just plain "black sedans" ferrying executives to and from airports. Cab and limo companies often get 300,000, 400,000 or more miles out of them, and that's what I want, ridiculous longevity. One of my coworkers bought a Town Car new in 1989. 24 years/220,000 miles later, it's his bulletproof daily driver. This is my blueprint. Mine is currently 9 years old with 44,000 miles--barely broken in.
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13 miles and 30 minutes with a huge V8 engine will be enough I would have thought to get it fully warm without worrying about engine and oilwear.
13 miles is plenty, but don't be fooled by your temperature gauge telling you that you heated 300+lb iron and aluminium to 90C in 2 miles. Coolant temperature gauges are heavily buffered and tend to read exactly 90 when the temperature is anything between 75 and 100C. The temperature sensor sits in the cylinder head which heats up first.
That big V8 will be doing little more than idling with an average of 26mph.
Even for the little 4.3 V6, GM classify journeys of under 4 miles in summer and 10 miles in subzero conditions as severe use and specify reduced oil change intervals for this type of use.
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Ambition of mine is to try out a V8. Must try a bigger upgrade next time I visit MA:) However, as RT says the "Bob IsTheOilGuy" site is worth looking at & has vast amounts of info, especially on oil analysis. Why not have the oil checked out at say 3000, and get the lab. to check for things relevant to cold-running. Don't ask me: there seem to be quite a number of parameters. Unthrottled may have some views on this?
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Mileage has nothing to do with cold starts. If you've started it cold then driving 100 miles or 1 mile won't change that.
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I assume your 13 mile round trip is two cold starts and two 6.5 mile trips??
This is a big engine to warm up and I'd say these trips are not enough.
I agree with RT 100%
If the oil specified is 5W20, you might find that hard to come by depending upon where you are. A high quality full synth 0W30 would almost certainly be every bit as good and easier to get. The 0W would help those cold starts.
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Stop fussing. Where I used to work we had a car used purely for moving things around the yard and collecting vital supplies from Burger King (0.3m away). It was fine.
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I assume your 13 mile round trip is two cold starts and two 6.5 mile trips??
If the oil specified is 5W20, you might find that hard to come by depending upon where you are.
Yes, two 6 1/2 mile trips per workday, then longer trips Sat or Sun as I run errands/attend church etc. Probably the longest I drive after a cold start would be 20-25 miles. As for 5W20, that's easy enough to come by around here, not to mention I know all the parts personnel at the local Ford agency...they can keep me swimming in 5W20 till doomsday.
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My 10 pence / 6.5 cents worth is that the factory-recommended 5,000 mile intervals are more than sufficient for longevity. At these intervals you'll be changing oil every 7-8 months which is fine.
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Did you import your Lincoln?
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And what about spare parts, service etc. ?
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I think Pebble is based in the US.
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Did you import your Lincoln?
No sir. It was sold new from the Lincoln-Mercury dealer in Melbourne, Florida; its first owner lived there and in Virginia Beach before moving to where I am, Las Vegas. When the owner became too old to drive anymore, she sold her Town Car to the Kia dealer I work for, and as soon as I saw it I bought it before it could go on sale to the general public.
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Oh, that explains everything. Some say the ride quality in this Lincoln Town Car is even better than a S-Class Mercs.
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I wouldn't say no to that--I used to have a Mercedes 380SL and the ride in the Town Car is far better. Air suspension assures you glide down the road without feeling bumps--it's a very pillowy, supersoft ride. Not to mention the passenger cabin is so well insulated it's just dead silent inside.
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Pebble, a few of us here in the UK might like a Lincoln but petrol (gas) is about $8 a US gallon here, so we couldn't afford to do long runs anyway!
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Eek! I paid $3.49/US gallon the other day, and was complaining about that. You could still have a Town Car over there, though: fuel may cost more but Great Britain is so small your journeys wouldn't be near the size of what we're used to Stateside. And: mpg for this car isn't *so* bad--I've been getting about 21 per UK gallon, 24 or 25 on the Interstate.
Edited by Pebble on 03/05/2013 at 18:00
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"I've been getting about 21 per UK gallon..."
Does that qualify as a "gas-guzzler", or does the mpg have to be even worse for that? :-)
Edited by FP on 03/05/2013 at 20:25
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Does that qualify as a "gas-guzzler", or does the mpg have to be even worse for that? :-)
I don't know why you're scoffing. According to the EPA, the 10 worst gas guzzlers in each segment are dominated by premium European manufacturers. The only difference is that the US manufacturers can produce powerful, high spec cars at a price most people can afford.
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According to the EPA, the 10 worst gas guzzlers in each segment are dominated by premium European manufacturers.
But very few of them actually get bought and used on the road. A 4x4 hater would quote the RR Sports 16mpg as proof petrol is too cheap, while ignoring the fact the diesel TDV8 makes up 99% of Range Rover sales.
In the states the same is probably true, the top gas guzzlers are indeed European but how many BMW 550's do you find in Los Angeles? The difference is more stark when you look at what actually sells.
Best selling UK cars; Ford Fiesta, Vauxhall Corsa, Ford Focus et al
Best selling US cars: Chevrolet Silverado & Ford F150 top the list every year, even if they're not really cars.
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Wow, what a car, I hired one of these in LA when I visited just after the 1992 earthquake. It was great to drive, but massive - espcially as I was alone. Plenty of boot space for my suitcase!
It's just as well OP is in USA, this car is just too large for UK roads, parking bays etc.
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Why did Ford pull the town car?
Any chance of a return?
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As you are in Las Vegas I should think in summer the car's engine will fully warm up, even in such short a journey as the temperature outside is likely to be over 100F and you will no doubt be running the aircon giving the engine something extra to do
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Why did Ford pull the town car?
Any chance of a return?
And what about the spares ?
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Ford pulling the plug on the Town Car and its brothers the Ford Crown Victoria and Mercury Grand Marquis was, I think, a big mistake, especially as Ford hasn't replaced them with anything. They sold nearly 10 million Panther platform cars from the late Seventies to 2011, and here in Vegas they're everywhere------not just the civilian cars, but countless police cars, taxis, fleet cars and limousines. Every major Vegas hotel has a fleet of Town Car stretch limos, as well as regular size Town Car "Black sedans" to ferry around the VIP guests. You also see white Town Car limos that belong to the Vegas wedding chapels. Even the occasional car converted to a hea***. Cops drive Crown Vics, taxis are Crown Vic or Grand Marquis (though one taxi company runs Town Cars) and limos are Town Cars since Cadillac gave up on rear wheel drive large sedans that were easily stretchable. What's currently left in the Lincoln lineup just doesn't measure up to the Panther standard, I'm sorry to say.
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The platform was ditched because body-on-frame can't hold a candle to monocoque construction for lightness and stiffness.
Body panel replacements are cheaper with body-on-frame and chassis extension is easier. But overall, the crown vics and their derivitives were getting long in the tooth compared to their competitors and battered taxi cabs wasn't really the image Ford wanted to portray!
I'm not kicking the Crown vic btw. Whilst in Chicago I would hail a crown vic with rather more enthusiasm than I would the dreadful bronze Manganese TX4. Awful vehicle.
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Body panel replacements are cheaper with body-on-frame and chassis extension is easier. But overall, the crown vics and their derivitives were getting long in the tooth compared to their competitors and battered taxi cabs wasn't really the image Ford wanted to portray!
That's all true. Those cars were popular with cops etc. for just that reason--easy and cheap to stretch them or do body repairs. The first Panther cars came out in the fall of '78, I think, so they were a bit behind the times by now, I suppose...but boy, are they easy to drive.
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Yes,
the body on frame is old hat but not a good enough reason why Ford couldnt have simply replaced it with a modern chassis and set up?
Are Ford making that much money from the F150's and other junk it sells stateside to not have to worry about the Lincoln car segment?
Slightly off topic, have the Chinese manufacturers entered the market in the US yet?
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Slightly off topic, have the Chinese manufacturers entered the market in the US yet?
Not yet. In 2007 or so, a couple of them were trying to get Stateside. One of them was called Chamco. At that point, the plan was for the dealership where I work to add whatever Chinese car Chamco would have brought over, plus Mahindra trucks and SUVs. We were planning to build a separate building for them on empty land next to our existing Kia/Mitsubishi/Suzuki building...then the economy crashed and all these plans vanished into thin air. So no Red Chinese cars, nothing from India on US roads. Maybe someday.
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the body on frame is old hat but not a good enough reason why Ford couldnt have simply replaced it with a modern chassis and set up?
Are Ford making that much money from the F150's and other junk it sells stateside to not have to worry about the Lincoln car segment?
The F150 is BOF! All vehicles designed for heavy towing duty use a a chassis construction.
But crown vic was designed as a passenger car. Taxi drivers are a conservative (small c) bunch and they'll moan about the end of the vic, but the fwd monocoque format will make much more sense. It's only the outdated notion that fwd=econobox that holds it back.
The Mondeo is over 600lb lighter than the vic, and the cabin space isn't much smaller. In stop-start driving, that 600lb equates to a lot of extra fuel.
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I'm seriously thinking of getting one myself, as a weekend-sort-of-car, solely for that purpose only. I'm in mainland Europe and generally fuel price is an issue here, but as I said, one weekend trip of 100-150 kilometers only. I use subway (underground) mainly and public transport. My only concern is that the Panther platform is no longer in production, so access to spare parts might be somewhat limited in the not so distant future, right ?
Edited by Piowolf on 06/05/2013 at 13:53
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My only concern is that the Panther platform is no longer in production, so access to spare parts might be somewhat limited in the not so distant future, right ?
I don't know about getting parts on the Euro mainland, but considering how many millions of Panther cars Ford made over the years, parts here in USA are plentiful--I think it will be a long time before parts availability is an issue.
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Yes, I realize it has sort of morphed from a car into icon and therefore will be supported for a long time, but you never know. Look at what happened to Citroen XM in Europe. The last year of its production was 2000 and you can barely obtain anything when it comes to spares for that model. Now, take a Merc E-Class, BMW 5 or an Audi A6 for that matter. You can order anything and anytime for those German cars and choose from a huge variety of OEM parts. But for Citroen XM ? No sir, sorry sir, we no longer support this model. Yes sir, even though we've been manufacturing it for 15 years or so. Yes sir, even though it definitely was an icon. Sorry sir.
Catch my drift ?
Edited by Piowolf on 08/05/2013 at 16:04
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