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On Sat, 30 Dec 2017 16:13:01 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 12/30/2017 4:02 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 30 Dec 2017 13:15:06 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

Block heaters do make sense up in the frozen north. Where we vacation
in the western mountains, it is not unusual to see NEMA 5-15 plugs
sticking out of the grilles of cars. I assume that is for the heater.
I agree with Don. At anything below 0 F motor oil is going to be
molasses and not doing a lot of flowing/lubricating, even if it is
5wsumpin. I also wonder how well the oil in the rear axle and
transmission is working.

If you read stories about the Russian campaign in WWII, they even had
problems with lubrication in their small arms.

Even at 30-40 degrees the oil in a car isn't going to flow normally
until it warms up. Operating temp is what, about 195-205 degrees?

My Yamaha runs at 140 and I think the Merc was more like 120. They
still said run 10w30 if you were up north and 25w40 down south. I ran
straight 30HD pretty much the whole 3000 hours in the Merc. My boat
seldom gets started below 75 degrees tho.

My wife's former car ... a 2008 Mercury Mountaineer ... had close to
200,000 miles on it when she traded it in. It had a remote start that
she used pretty much every day during the winter months, even if the
temperature was above freezing. I used to warn her that it wasn't good
for the catalytic converter (as I had been told). The engine was
perfectly fine when she traded it as was the catalytic converter (still
had the original and still passed emission tests).

Isn't the "emission test" just scanning for codes these days?
I will agree cars have come a long way from the crap we drove around
before the 80s. At 100k miles, you might as well just take the tags
off and leave it smoking by the side of the road if you are not
prepared to rebuild it.
You needed a tune up every 10-15k miles and the old bias ply tires
were usually ready to go by then too.

In Massachusetts they still did the emissions test with the probe in the
tailpipe up until a few years ago. Forget exactly when they went to
reading codes only. But even with the codes, if your emissions are off,
you flunk. Usually it's just the oxygen sensor that goes bad.

I have never had a car that was tested. I had a 75 Monza that was
tricked up to the point that I knew it would never pass when PG
started testing so I "moved" to my nieces house in Charles county (on
paper) where they didn't test until I moved to Florida (one tag cycle)
but by then I traded the Monza anyway. Down here they never tested.

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