long term storage

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#11

12-05-2008, 11:43 AM

TCH80226

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Join Date: Jul 2008

Posts: 45

Re: long term storage

Quote:

Originally Posted by haroldo

....just make sure you don't do this in an attached garage.

True . . exhaust venting would be required for that option.

#12

12-07-2008, 07:26 AM

tbone526

Active Enthusiast

Join Date: Jun 2008

Posts: 188

Re: long term storage

Quote:

Originally Posted by TCH80226

I had a similar thought process for when your car might be exposed to very cold overnight conditions. Turn off everything except your heater, crank that down to minimum temperature setting. Power up your car and lock your doors. I would think that would temporarily replace the need for an engine block heater and have your cabin temperature at a reasonable level when you got in the next morning. Not great mpg results but at $1.70/gal not terrible.

Having been sitting in a parking lot with the car "on" and an ambient temperature of about 15 degrees (no lights, heat turned all the way down to 65, just the radio on) I found the car would run about 3 minutes out of every 10 just to keep all systems warmed up. Over the course of a 10-hour night that would mean about 180 minutes or 3 hours of total ICE running time. Gas has come way down, but I'm still not going to waste that much fuel.

Under a similar scenario in summer temperatures, the ICE wouldn't run nearly as much since the engine, catalytic converter, and other systems wouldn't cool off nearly so rapidly. You'd probably only see an actual run time of 5 minutes per hour (purely a guess on my part) which would equate to 120 minutes per day.