Often people explain that it’s because you ride a cold engine. But a long ride also starts with a cold engine. So how can two 5km trips per day be worse than a two 20km trips per day if an engine starts cold in both scenarios?
Or does this arguments works under presumtion that you ride 100km in 20 short trips vs 5 trips?
In: Engineering
There’s two primary reasons that I know.
One is what we call “heat cycles” – like you say, it’s harder on an engine to run it while it’s cold. If you drive 100 miles in one long trip, it is only run cold once. But if you drive 100 miles in short, five mile trips, it is run 20 times while its cold. Those 20 cold starts are a lot harder on the engine than the single one done on the long trip.
The other is the nature of driving on long trips vs short ones. Engines love to run for long periods of time at a steady speed. On long trips, you tend to drive on the highway, averaging roughly the same speed for long periods of time. In short trips, you’re probably in traffic. Stopping, accelerating from stop, stopping again, etc. All that stopping and starting is much harder work for your engine.
Latest Answers