Norm Peterson

Still should be a little careful about how hard you drive of from a dead cold start.

Having sufficient lubrication is one thing. Avoiding differential expansion between things fitted to close tolerances is a somewhat different animal. Warm it up with some sense of what's happening inside.

I'd guess that Ford is reasonably confident about 5 - 10 seconds with respect to the warranty rate spread out over the entire fleet as a statistical average thing. Anybody's individual car is not a statistical average; it really is either "pass or fail". What you do get to choose is how hard and how soon you drive, with respect to how high your own individual risk tolerance happens to be.


Norm

Nuke

Just be easy on the throttle until she's up to or near operating temp.

shanec

I wait until the rpms start dropping. Then I drive, but even then I drive it pretty easy, shifting at 2000-2500 until the car is up to normal temp.

Who wants to beat their car to its limit anyway? I say take whatever reasonable measures you can to keep the engine safe.

Torch Red GT

i just wait for the idle to go below 1k

usc49erfan

i wait about 5 mins, car cranks at 1750 rpm, then goes down to about 1250, and at about the 5min mark it hits 850, safe rather than sorry

soon2bu

That's exactly what I do every time.

Although the RPM's drop anywhere from 5-60 seconds, the engine takes about 20 minutes to fully warm up, so no beating on her on my commute to work. Not even on the way back. :/

Sam I am

Mine warms up for the 20-30 seconds, then I idle to the end of the street. I short shift at or below 2k rpm for the first 2-3 minutes, then it's on.

rydeordie

I let mines warm up for awhile....I guess I'm old school

Steve09GT/CS

I agree with Ford in the article. 5 to 10 seconds is enough to bring the oil pressure up. After that I go easy on the RPM's till she's up to operating temperature.

TPony

I have always warmed up my cars, trucks prior driving off...never had an issue.