Looking for winter driving tips

a block heater will pre warm your engine so you don't have to go through the full warm up process, and you get quicker cabin heat as a bonus. do you have somewhere to plug in?

i think the engine cools down and has to enter the final warm up phase again. are you in eco mode?

 

pleasure. you have it installed at the dealer, then you just plug it in at night.

 

How long is your commute? The more you can avoid short trips starting with cold engine, the better. If possible, consolidate trips.

I'd second bisco' block heater suggestion. Installed price is somewhere under $250, indicated on Toyo Canada website. 2 hours is a good time. It's not a mirical worker, but will raise coolant temp around 20C above ambient, a help.

Also, check your tire pressures, winter tends to drop them.

Winters can be pretty brutal in TO.

Anyway, don't sweat kms per tank, don't run it low. If you want to monitor, stick to liters/100 km, per tank.

 

her commute is 10 km, one way. can you put it on a timer?

 

i suppose anyone can do it. mendel will know better than me.

 

Leaving it plugged in all night will cost more in electricity than it saves in gas. Use a timer set to limit the warmup time to two or three hours.

 

I recently bought a block heater for $100 from my local Toyota dealer and installed it myself. The process is pretty straightforward, if you're interested you can take a gander at this YouTube video I put together describing how it's done.

I also bought this "Little Buddy" car interior warmer from Canadian Tire. I didn't permanently mount mine, when I want to use it I just place it inside the car on top of the cup holders, point it towards the driver's door, and run the cord out the bottom of the passenger door. The cord is flat and the door fully closes easily on it.

I go out to the garage and plug both in about an hour or two before I plan to use the car, but if you leave at the same time every day it would be simple enough to use a timer. Just be sure to get one that can handle the load.

Winters aren't all that terribly cold here in Vancouver, but I've become addicted to having a nice cozy car, and a side benefit is that the engine doesn't run as long or as often in order to produce cabin heat. I drive with the climate control system set to "recirculate", and in the odd case where the windows start to fog up a bit I punch the "front defrost" button for the short time it takes them to clear.

 

Hi GlobalGirl,
My wife manages to get 4.8 - 5.2 l/100km on short 10km trips to work. She uses a block heater on a timer that kicks in automatically 2 hours before she leaves. That's after I gave her this trick. Before, she was getting in the low 6's:

Whenever you're stopped for more than a few seconds, turn off the heat and the engine will stop right away. As soon as you start moving again, turn it back on. I wish the "eco" mode would do that automatically (or perhaps with a "super-eco" mode?). Unless it's really cold, like in the -15's or less, you should see your consumption get better. I do that all the time with my TCH for *my* 10km run to the train station. That helps me keep it under 7l/100km as this car is good on longer distances but not as much as the C on short ones.

Hope this helps,
Daniel

 

That remaining distance is just a forecast based on average history, and can't possibly know the actual details of the upcoming trip segments that can cause enormous changes in fuel consumption. Engine warmup can cost a lot of fuel. All this means that the range remaining can change much more -- or less -- than the actual distance you drive.

Fortunately, that display leaves a significant safety margin or buffer, so you were not anywhere near as close to running of fuel as you thought.

But because of the inherent lack of any real accuracy, the equivalent display in my other vehicle always rounds the number to the nearest 10 miles, then completely blanks it out when it falls to 30 miles (i.e. 50 km). The blank display is supposed to scare drivers into REFUELING NOW!

Don't get into a habit of playing brinksmanship with low fuel, especially in conditions where you don't want to walk a long distance if you screw up and actually run out of gas. Lots of people have pushed it just a bit too far.

 

I would just keep an eye on the gas gauge. There's not a lotta upside to stretching tanks.

 

Question in regards to this: If the cabin heater is on, does not the gas engine have to run? Is the cabin heater an electric heater or like all normal cars-heater core heater? If it is a heater core heater, it must have warm/hot coolant running thru the heater core, thus have to have a running gas engine to heat the coolant...or is my hypothesis all full of wacky...