Pulling your car out of storage? Jump starting? READ THIS FIRST.

[Go-ran]

I live in a building, and drive my car underground in circles for 1-2 km every week. That is fine isnt it? The car always cranks the same every week. I warm the car up for 1-2 minutes then drive.

All good ?

 

[doctormosfet]

First, I cannot speak to the GM design. They may have different pump volumes, clearances, pump height over oil level, etc.

Second, 10-20 seconds of cranking to get any pressure at all is literally 5x longer than you would get just starting the engine... and I can assure you, results in more bearing wear than just starting the damn thing. The enemy of plain bearings is insufficient oil flow and rotational speeds too slow to properly form a hydrodynamic oil film.

Third, I answered your last comment above. When I said we dealt with this constantly, I meant exactly that. We had to develop a method of priming these engines because they WILL NOT do it on their own at cranking speeds in any remotely reasonable time frame to avoid doing more harm than good.

Go try it yourself and then come back and you will see that I am not exaggerating... if you dare!

You make a very fair and reasoned argument here. FWIW, I'm not trying to be difficult here. Just trying to make sure I have the right information before spring start-up. My stepdad has been working on/building/rebuilding engines for many decades since he was a teenager, so I'm just trying to reconcile his expertise with yours. It is possible that you're both right and the difference is some detail between GM and Mopar engines.

 

[Viper Specialty]

I live in a building, and drive my car underground in circles for 1-2 km every week. That is fine isnt it? The car always cranks the same every week. I warm the car up for 1-2 minutes then drive.

All good ?

Definitely doing more harm than good. Run the car up to temp, bring it home, cover and store it on a tender. No need to start and run it more than once a year, and only do it when you have the ability to run and drive the car. If you are actually utilizing the car, fine... but dont do it for the sake of doing it.

Excessive starts and idle time doesnt help much of anything.

 

[Go-ran]

Definitely doing more harm than good. Run the car up to temp, bring it home, cover and store it on a tender. No need to start and run it more than once a year, and only do it when you have the ability to run and drive the car. If you are actually utilizing the car, fine... but dont do it for the sake of doing it.

Excessive starts and idle time doesnt help much of anything.

I am referring to winter storage. I live in a building so storage the car on a tender cant be done as there is no place to plug it in. Only way to keep the battery going is to turn it on once a week of so and drive for about a mile.

 

[doctormosfet]

I am referring to winter storage. I live in a building so storage the car on a tender cant be done as there is no place to plug it in. Only way to keep the battery going is to turn it on once a week of so and drive for about a mile.

Depending on how secure your area is, you might consider a small battery generator (like a Jackery) that you can run a tender off of. Then you just have to recharge that once in a while and plug the tender back in.

 

[Go-ran]

Cant really be doing that, its a parking garage that serves 2 buildings and 6-700 condos

 

[Viper Specialty]

I am referring to winter storage. I live in a building so storage the car on a tender cant be done as there is no place to plug it in. Only way to keep the battery going is to turn it on once a week of so and drive for about a mile.

I know you meant winter storage, but I didnt know there were no available outlets.

The same advice stands. Better to pull the battery and bring it inside and let the car sit untouched.

Alternatively, you can use a battery powered inverter to power a maintainer, and then bring the inverter battery in once a month to re-charge.

A Milwaukee inverter should work + an M18 large frame 12AH battery or similar, powering a Noco 1-2A float charger.

 

[Go-ran]

I know you meant winter storage, but I didnt know there were no available outlets.

The same advice stands. Better to pull the battery and bring it inside and let the car sit untouched.

Alternatively, you can use a battery powered inverter to power a maintainer, and then bring the inverter battery in once a month to re-charge.

A Milwaukee inverter should work + an M18 large frame 12AH battery or similar, powering a Noco 1-2A float charger.

Thank you for the advice, i will continue for the next couple of weeks and then take your advice on one of the 2 solutions for next season. Cheers