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I looked for a thread to see if this had been covered before to no avail. Oh well.

How long should it take your car to warm up in the morning when it's cold? I mean single digit and colder cold. I drove 6 miles last night from my friends house to mine with ambient temps in the single digits, and of course the temp dial cranked and the fan at almost full kilt. The whole way, the temp gauge never got past 1/4, and going down a hill it actually dropped back to C! This whole time the heater put out heat and I was comfortable(-ish)

This morning was the same, but it was 10 miles into my trip before the needle got to its accustomed spot on the dial. Is this normal for these things, since they have small, lightweight aluminum motors? I know my truck takes a long time to get fully warmed, but that's a big hurkin' V8 with rear heat plumbed in. I would think a little motor like this would warm right up in minutes, not 10 miles.

 
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Man, I've rarely been around the single digit temperature range, but it still take a good 5-10 minutes of idling for mine to heat up fully. It seems like a pretty normal inconvenience. 10 miles seems excessive though.

That seems weird if your temp gauge dropped like that... If you're concerned about it, have you ever considered getting an OBDII reader? I use TorquePro on my phone with a cheapie $30 bluetooth adapter. It lets you see a raw number for your coolant temp (among a multitude of other things), more useful than just a gauge. Might be useful so you can at least note a trend.

I could have sworn that bigger engines heat faster. I guess cold weather just sucks for everyone. :-/

 
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Bigger = more mass = longer warm up + lots of radiators (heater cores) = long warm up times. The buses at work will take over an hour to fully warm up in single digit temps without the coolant heater, and every time you stop the motor will start to cool off again.

My Yukon has the factory front heat and an aftermarket (fabbed) rear heat in the cargo area that really helps heat the whole cabin that adds a lot of coolant and also places (heater cores) to remove what heat has been made in cold weather.

I just didn't think my little Honda would take as long or longer than my Yukon to warm up, given the circumstances.

 
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I always figured bigger engine=more explosions=shorter warmup :-P

 
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i have a 9km drive every morning to a 4 laner that i take to work
and my 05 is blowing warm air and water temp is at the normal 84c about 4km in.
I dont turn the heat on until I see it at 70c either.(using my scan guage 2 )
its cold air any way below that.
I dont idle very long in the morning some days not at all.

don't know if it matters but i do run synthetic in the winter.
find it spins over easier that tiny battery takes a beating at -20 and below

 
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How long is a stick?



It takes X amount of fuel to heat Y amount of liquid by Z degrees.
Because SCIENCE!
(It takes 1 calorie to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius.)

You can burn that fuel fast or slow, that makes your warmup time vary.


The V8 might hold twice as much coolant as a 4 cylinder, but it also burns more than twice as much fuel in the same time span.

(Metallurgy and efficiency just throw more variables into the equation.)



My Buick 3.8 put out fair heat a lot quicker than my Civic 1.8 too.
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10 minutes of just sitting still idling doesn't get my engine hot. Mine still has the blue cold light on after sitting and idling for 10 minutes when it's 0 degrees F outside (remote start user here, it wastes a lot of gasoline and kills my gas mileage average).

If I jump in and DRIVE it for that same 10 minutes, then it gets warmed up in a much shorter time.
If I drive it in stop and go traffic, it can still take a long while to get warmed up.
If I can hit the interstate right away, it gets warmed up a whole lot faster yet.

Slightly lower temp gauge reading in the cold might be average, but you might have a gauge or sensor problem if it dropped out like that yet still had good heater output.
Codes? Data?

Diesels don't waste nearly as much heat as gasoline engines. Diesels put the majority of their heat energy into running (80%+ heat efficient), whereas gas engines waste a crapload of their heat energy (~35% heat efficient) into the exhaust and cooling system.
I have seen designs where running the heater could easily double the length of time it took to reach operating temp.


JMO, YMMV

 
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Coolant temp sensor? Low coolant? Heater core bubbles or dirty i ran clr into mine and let it soak and rinsed it out. And i switched to 50/50 antifreeze. And 0w 20 synth oil. And i never warm up anything unless the doors and windows are frozen shut we get -60 c / - 80 f and my car just starts stuttering with a brand new batt but heats up driving in 5 minutes.10 if not hwy. 20 at idle. But thats with the heater core closed and the blower off. Then i crank the feet heat . Ericthecarguy.com does a good video on heater cores.