Mrs. Homie and I are doing a 16-hour drive in the next few months. Our car, a 2007 Yaris with 170k miles, isn’t new by any means, but it’s a trooper. Nevertheless, will driving 16 hours straight (excluding stopping for gas) carry any acute risks? Her mom insists we need to stop and shut it off for a few minutes every few hours, but that sounds like the rantings of a crazy old woman to me.
Thanks in advance.
It’s actually worse, but not by much. But you will most likely want to stop every 2 hours for gas, food, snacks, bathroom and for sanity reasons.
But the car is just fine going the distance.
Yeah, that’s nonsense. And as said above, you’ll be stopping occasionally for all the obvious reasons anyway. If everything is functioning correctly on the car, it has no reason to need a “rest”.
no. it’s better for your car to stay in continuous operation; the powertrain stays at operating temperature. It’s a pile of metal and plastic, metal and plastic don’t get tired and don’t need to “rest.”
I drive from New Jersey to Toronto and back often (1,000 mile round trip and I’ve done it at least 100 times) and when I’m alone, the car doesn’t usually stop moving for an entire tank. No ill effects ever.
Cars are not people.
Our minivan was very distressed to hear that.
[minivan]Gee, I wish I was people.[/minivan]
Have you ever owned an old VW bug? There was a reason the movie Herby was accepted.
Go ahead and drive the 16 hours … rest the car for 8 hours … then drive it around and see if she’s acting sluggish, a little less get-up-and-go or generally bitchy … I’ll warrant if you try real hard, you’ll be able to detect one of these behaviors …
No reason at all to “rest” the car. As noted earlier - stopping results in the car cooling and then heating again - which is where the stress and wear occurs. Taxis last a ridiculous distance when they never stop. The only reason to stop is if some component of the car is overheating - and if this is the case you either have a design flaw or an actual fault that needs fixing.
I believe that steady driving under moderate load (which is what highway driving is) for extended periods is better for the engine, drivetrain and components than stop-start.
I regularly complete 750 mile trips across Europe. We have a car that can cover 600 miles on a tank and thanks to my children having bladders like racehorses we can easily cover 500+ miles and 7 hours without stopping. When we do stop it is just 20 minutes for fuel and biological necessities, the car seems perfectly happy and I never give it a second thought.
Your MIL is from a generation who remembers how cars were 50 years ago. Older engines could suffer problems on extended high-speed journeys because the oil pump would suck all the oil from the sump to the top of the engine, causing catastrophic big end failure. This simply does not happen in modern cars, even ten-year-old ones.
I would, however, suggest that when you stop for comfort breaks, you also give the car a quick check. Touch the tyres to see if any are overheating (may be low pressure or brakes) and a look under the bonnet (hood) to check fluid levels. If you are carrying a load, you may want to raise the tyre pressures as per the manual, but do it the day before, when they are cold.
That drive would be illegal for a commercial driver, and tiredness will be your main problem. I assume that you will share the driving, so the passenger should try to sleep between stints at the wheel. If you start seeing things, pull over and get some shut-eye.
Agreed, there’s no advantage to adding rest periods to the trip, and the disadvantage of thermal cycling. Having things go cold and hot again increases sealed parts and bolted joints having movements between them as they heat and expand at different speeds.
I suggest the misunderstanding arose because living things generally are able to repair themselves during periods of rest. Without a capability to heal oneself, rest isn’t an important concept.
The car can last longer than you can. Make sure you get enough rest, driving while sleep deprived is very dangerous.
This is an example of why correlation is not causation.
If there’s a heatwave, well over the ton, eg to 45 degrees C , in a place that is normally 30 C or so … then drive along a interstate highway,
you see a number of vehicles broken down due to overheating.
So you might think, they drove for two hours, and broke down.
This isn’t the cause.
They drove at sustains high engine power in high temperature for more than 10 minutes, and that is why it boiled its coolant water and overheated.
Ok, so an engine with a problem (eg broken fan, clogged radiator, broken water pump or jammed thermostat , or not running on all cylinders… ) may well be able to nursed along by copious resting.
So what I am saying is that its only a very sick car that needs a rest.
People actually find highway mileage is not as wearing on a vehicle as city run around mileage
Less stops and starts, less engine and drive train turns (RPM assumed to be rather similar, or only a little higher, but you are in eg 5th not 3rd and you are going twice as fast ) to achieve the result …
less bumps to the suspension , less splashes to the engine bay, less sharp turns that wear the steering system. No one noticed that a vehicle that was driven for 20 hours a day, eg a taxi, had any particular problem given the same mileage (apart from the need to service based on mileage not months.)
As long as you checked the fluids before the trip you should be able to continue on through the trip.
At gas stops, check the fluids.
I would see no harm in doing it just to make her happy.
Unless you have a manic preference for beetling down driving almost non-stop, glaring ahead. Which happens.
In the United States, 250,000 drivers fall asleep at the wheel every day, according to the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
A comforting thought.
Think about all the commercial and emergency vehicles that stay running almost constantly during a work shift. They have a ton of idle time on them and still keep going.
You can go 12 hours without urinating??:dubious: