What a Wise Man Taught Me About Engines

[THX1123]

It was 25 F (-4 C) here one morning last week. I watched my neighbor start her car, back it out, and hard-rev away down the road. Then the guy across the street did the same thing in his pickup. Absolute cringe.

My Dad taught me to never hard-rev any cold engine when I was 6, especially when it is bloody freezing. Hard to wrap my head around being clueless.

 

[Happy Enchilada]

When I went shopping for a rig to replace the trusty '99 Ford Explorer Sport I'd driven for 16 years and 200K miles, I had one criteria that I wouldn't budge on: It had to fit in the smallish one-car bay in our three-car garage, just like the Explorer did for all those years. I ended up with a Chevy Colorado pickup that fits like it was tailor made for it. Wife's 2017 Explorer languishes in the larger "two-car" bay. So we never scrape windshields and they always fire up first crank. My neighbors, by contrast, store useless and worthless crap in boxes in their garages while they let tens of thousands of dollars worth of vital transport vehicles freeze in the driveway.

 

[wrathfuldeity]

Maternal grandad, a Swedish immigrant was a tractor mechanic for John Deer, one of his sons (my uncle) travelled the world teaching diesel repair and became a senior vp of a well known trucking vendor. Now, my son is merchant mariner diesel engineer with his pro certs that runs oil out of Valdez on the HUGE tankers. All three of these men made and had a great life wrenching. As for me, a lowly shade-tree grease monkey that knows about cold engine starts in the winter. Hell back in the day, I took my battery out of the car/truck and put it on the back porch, plugged in the block heater and the oil pan heater so the damm thing would crank in the morning. Followed by a good 10-15 minutes of slow idle before driving to school or the farm. And now, my little gas lawn mower starts after the first or second pull after a long winter.