I guess I should have made it clear that an “Italian Tuneup” won’t fix that problem.
But, walnut shells will.
I just did something similar with my gf’s Arctic Cat ATV. She fills the bed with manure and I dump it. In nice weather she just uses a wheelbarrow.
Today she told me her ATV needed dumped. It hadn’t been run in weeks. I dumped it, but it was a two minute drive. So I ran around the perimeter of the pastures, looking for problems, then raced around the meadow and into the woods.
I rationalize it as charging the battery and blowing off carbon.
This Edmunds article in today’s paper discussed storing cars. In a couple of places it suggests driving instead of just idling - if for nothing else to avoid flat spots on tires.
I recall the “burn off carbon” advice back in the day. As I understood, this was the days of actual carburetors, of questionable tuning and compromised efficiency - tuned for typical driving. (Not to mention automatic chokes) So a lot of slow or stop and go driving, idling, etc. mean running very rich and incomplete combustion causing carbon buildup in the cylinder heads, clogged and fouled spark plugs, etc… In the last decades, with computerized fuel injection, not only is fuel economy and incomplete combustion much less of a problem, so is carbon build-up much less likely.
(Anyone notice their spark plugs coming out all black nowadays? Changing spark plugs used to be recommended every year or so back then…)
The recommendation I recall was about an hour or so at highway speeds (60mph plus). Just get the engine good and hot and not running rich for a while. Today, I would guess this is far less of a concern.
I had to read that twice, kayaker …
I’ve a plow truck with chains on all 4 wheels, so hitting the highway is not an option. Not for me anyway. Putting the chains on is an afternoon job. I’ve gotten to the point where I just use a bottle jack and jack each wheel up to do it.
It get’s a work out in the winter. In low range 4x4, the engine RPM’s get up there a bit. Then I just plug in a battery tender. Jump starting it after we get a foot of snow can be nearly impossible.
Setting aside the possibly obsolete “blow out the carbon” bit, the real point of the “drive it” advice is that after each use the engine cools and moisture condenses everywhere inside. Which ends up in the oil, transmission / gear case fluids, and in the exhaust system. If it sits there long enough you get corrosion which represents permanent damage.
If the engine is running long enough and hard enough to get the oil fully up to temp and keep it there long enough to evaporate out the accumulated moisture you’re good. With the assumption that engine oil operating temp is a decent enough proxy for transmission / gear case temps and exhaust piping temps. Whether you’re doing that in 4Low pushing a pile of snow or running 60mph on the flats at 1500 RPM in top gear doesn’t much matter.
Hot enough long enough is all that matters. And we’ll all always be guessing on the lower bound for “enough” of both those things in our individual uncontrolled experiments called “car ownership”.
I saw an Instagram video where the guy puts a chunk of 2x4x10 inside the laid-out chains between two crosslinks, then backs the truck up onto the wood. Now the tire is sitting 2" high above the chains and not on them. Easier to adjust, hook up, tighten crosslinks. For the front wheels, he can even turn the steering to get the tire at an angle. Repeat for each tire.
Still trying to kinda picture this, but it sounds doable. My front chains the cross links are in an X pattern though.
Engineering Explained has a good take on the Italian tune-up. Direct injection engines don’t seem to benefit from it, maybe even the opposite, and engine revving is more effective than simply driving fast on the highway, especially nowadays with 6+ speed transmissions that are barely above idle at highway speeds.
While this only applies to lengthy periods of inactivity, another reason to drive your car occasionally relates to various seals and gaskets. Sitting long enough they can dry out and leak.
“Burning off carbon” is indeed obsolete.
The point of getting your engine/exhaust warm enough, long enough is to have enough heat and time to evaporate any water in the exhaust. Exhaust fumes from a cold start contain enough crap to corrode your exhaust pretty fast if you never drive enough to dry the system.
Sitting at idle a modern engine might not get warm enough. ~10 minutes of normal driving will generate enough heat to accomplish this. It will also be sufficient to charge your battery.
This. The “accumulated moisture” is the water that’s produced by combustion of hydrocarbons. During a cold-start, that water (plus some unburned fuel from the rich starting conditions) ends up in the crankcase and exhaust, and short trips, especially in cold weather, won’t get rid of it. Next time you’re driving in cold weather, watch the cars in front of you when the traffic light turns green: the ones that were recently started will drool water out their tailpipes. Get out for ten miles of highway driving every now and then to properly warm things up for long enough to get rid of all of that water in the crankcase oil and in the exhaust.
As long as a vehicle was put away hot and dry after its most recent use, I’m not sure it’s necessary to take it out of the garage just for the sake of running it. My previous motorcycle routinely hibernated for 3-4 months each winter, and when I sold it with well over 100K miles on it, the engine was the healthiest thing on it. My current motorcycle gets the same hibernation treatment, and while it doesn’t have 100K on it yet, the engine still seems fine. As long as you put a battery tender on any vehicle that’s going to be parked for more than a few weeks, things should be fine if you want to let it sit and sit and sit.
There must be some spot in the chains where you can fit a short 2x4 chunk between the side chains so the wheel on top of that is not pinning down the cross-chains either. Never having put chains on for myself, I have no idea if this would actually give sufficient freedom to put on chains.
This is the answer that is often overlooked. Unless you have a completely stainless exhaust system your 15 minute drive to the store and back will not be enough to fully dry the exhaust. This will prematurely rot and rust your exhaust out. The car needes to be driven, on the open road, perhaps the freeway long enough to dry all the drive train out.
It was always my impression that this was just the water of immediate combustion condensing in the cold exhaust system; when the pipes were warm enough the water in the exhaust would leave the tailpipe as vapor rather than condensed as droplets, and would be rapidly dispersed and diluted in the dry cold air so that no fog would form behind the car. I wouldn’t expect the engine oil to be hot enough at startup or in the first few minutes to be driving off ‘stored’ water. Perhaps I’m wrong.
You’re right about that. I guess my point was that a hydrocarbon-fueled engine generates a lot of water as a combustion product, and you need to get the entire engine up to operating temp, and keep it there for a while, to drive off all of the water. Not just the crankcase oil, but also the exhaust pipe, which (when cold) accumulates a lot of condensate from the engine exhaust as you pointed out.
It was, back in the 1970s. At least on some cars.
I had a 1978 Olds Delta 88 in the mid 1980s. When I drove the car around town (Morgantown WV) for months on end, the car would start to feel a bit sluggish. The “fix” was simple. Take the car out on the highway and stomp on the accelerator. Do this 3 or 4 times, and the car’s performance would be noticeably better for the next several months. When the car did eventually start getting sluggish again, just go back out onto the highway and repeat. I can tell you from personal experience that it worked like a charm on a 1970s era Oldsmobile.
I have never seen this do anything useful on a car manufactured later than 1980. I have read that it can actually make things worse on a modern car.
In my admittedly limited experience, stomping on the gas pedal in your driveway does have some benefit to blowing the crap out of your engine, but it’s not as effective as taking the car out on the highway. I suspect that it’s because while you are getting the high revs, you’re not getting the high engine load while sitting in your driveway.
It’s also not always about speed. I personally would get my Olds up to about 50 mph on the highway, then would stomp on the gas until it got up around 65 or so. Then I’d let it drop back to 50, and repeat. The point was to blow the crap out of the engine, not to race.
The good news is that manufacturers seem to have worked out the kinks in their direct injection systems that prevent that intake valve fouling. The N54 motor in my previous BMW needed the heads removed and walnut blasted at 60,000 miles or so for best operation. The B58 motor in my current BMW apparently will never need it.
Yeah. Took me a minute to puzzle it out Clever idea.