I'm usually quite particular about warming up my engine gently before opening her up. Today I had to merge on to a busy dual carriageway having only driven for less than ten minutes with the temperature gauge still cold. For safety's sake I had to floor it in third up to 4,000 rpm to join the traffic flow and felt like I've smacked a puppy for the rest of the day. I'm just looking for reassurance that my one-off indiscretion won't have had any effect on the longevity of my car which I expect to keep to well over 100k miles.

Don't worry, the monkeys at the docks will have already done that at both ends of it's trip across the North Sea.....

Ten minutes is plenty. Most fluids would have warmed up a fair bit even if the gauge was still on cold.

I did the same thing with an Alfa years ago after only five minutes. The rest of the day it sounded a bit rough, the next day it was as good as ever, and went on to 140K before I sold it.

Oil can take a surprising amount of time to circulate on some engines, but 10 minutes should be more than enough. 

It is possible to baby an engine too much.  A bit of rough now and again can clear things out.

 

My current engine has 106, 000 miles.  I've had at least 4 200,000 mile plus vehicles, this one will hopefully do likewise.

No, I'm not a taxi driver - they do far more.

It takes seconds for oil to circulate not minutes, what your concern should be is over parts not evenly heated and thereby at operating temperature clearances.

Relatively hot aluminium pistons in a cooler cast iron block will be a slightly tighter fit than when the block has heated up and expanded slightly, we're talking microns here so nothing to panic over.

I'm not advocating taking it to the rev limiter from the moment you turn the key but realistically there's no need to nurse a cold engine unless sub zero temperatures are encountered, just to be safe.

In motorcycle circles it is important to warm the engine before use, you don't want it stalling just off choke pulling out of a junction with a bus bearing down on you.

In aviation circles, piston engines are required to be at operating temperature before take off, you are at max power and don't want anything going wrong on take off!

Both are operating safety issues not engine care procedures.

So in a healthy engine the oil will be pumped and circulating in seconds from the moment the engine turns over and frictional tolerances will be minimally influenced by uneven heating of internal components until the engine has reached its normal operating temperature.

Whether the long term durability or reliability is affected by stressing a cold engine is debatable.

I hope you feel less anxious about booting a cool engine now.

Thanks everyone, well informed answers as always leaving me much more reassured.

Seriously don't worry!

 

It's not like it's spontaneously going to break just for revving it with a cold engine just once!

 

I hope you rev it a bit now and then when it's warm.

 

Phil

Oh yes, when warmed up I use the full Rev range regularly. 51k and never needed a drop of oil between services.

Can't have upset the car too much, just sailed through its first MOT today.

4,000 after 10 minutes are you serious.....I mean for the love of ....

 

I once whilst fitting a new throttle tube to my track bike had set it up full on so when I started the engine it redlined at 14,000 rpm.

 

A season of track days and its still fine.