d22019

Here's the deal. At work they don't like us to idle anything to warm it up in the morning. The engines in question are 7.3 international engines. I noticed a few of the drivers now just fire them up and fly out of the lot full throttle after about 30 seconds. My question is what kind of damage are we looking at and how long until the problems appear? On mine the air compressor occasionally ticks and the turbo seals leak. These engines are in 20k buses and don't run high boost or egt if that matters. I feel bad for tearing up equipment but its a no win there.

I forgot to add the temps in the morning are usually between 12-30f.

bobfbigman

Penny wise and dollar foolish, all diesel should be at operating temp before you run the hard, gonna knock alot of years worth of life out of them, maybe they ought to get the manufactures manuals, I'm sure they don't want anybody to get hurt by not following man. sugestions.

rich

if you let just ease on down the rode after about a minute, shouldnt be to bad of an issue. I wouldnt run them hard till about 5 min of driving. I have gotten into my trucks and doodled off right after starting them and then drive normal after about 5 min. In those temps it would take about 10 - 15 min of idle to get a good warm up anyway.

high bid

I think this is a good point to make. You could make a recomendation citing the mfg manual and also state the consequences of not allowing any warm up which=reduced engine life and $$$$.

rufushusky

Well are these things are at least 8-9 years old at this point. The T444e went by by in 2003-4 along with the 7.3 PSD.

Honestly, I don't know how much catastrophic damage there really will be. I rarely if ever let my truck idle, even in the single digits. That being said I also don't hammer it right after firing up, I just drive like a sane human.

7.3 in particular are pretty tough engines (like the Cummins and Dmax too), there is a shop by my parents. The guy owns 5-6 7.3 powered trucks (a few SDs a few 4700s) and the idiot drivers rarely even wait for the GPs to fire, hammer the heck out of them, leave idling in freezing weather for hours and he traded on in with like 670k on the original engine, I think the lowest mileage on all of them he said was 350k or so. It is amazing how much abuse these engines can take.

Busboy

Imagine how much "damage" there would be if you couldn't defrost the windows properly and hit something or someone.

d22019

Thanks for the input guys. I was worried about blowing a head gasket or lack of lubrication from thick oil. I will try to be easy on what I have now and see how it goes. I personally think its a dumb idea not letting them warm up a couple minutes at least, but thats government for you. I worked in the shop for this place and have seen what these engines will handle. Nothing will kill them except for a hung open injector, not even the 20k oil intervals a bunch of these got on cheap oil. I could go on and on about the abuse these took from poor maintenance/ patch jobs but I'll save it for another thread.

Hvytrkmech

You should definitely warm up an HEUI system for at least 5 minutes then ease it down the road.

cougar

Run a generator for the block heater.

9812vram

Not sure if the 7.3 has aluminum pistons or not, but on engines that do, they can seize up due to the pistons expanding faster than the cylinders.
Damage is being done to the trucks that are run hard when cold, although there's a pretty small chance you'll ever see it. All the good engines can take a surprising amount of abuse so usually the way it works is these vehicles get the bag run off them and then they're traded in/sold before it shows mechanically. Then some poor shlub buys it and has to do the a head, then main bearings, then the trans, now it's burning oil, then the diff goes out, then..... Then he goes on the forums and says "these trucks are junk! Look what I all had to do to mine"!
It's too bad everything is driven by the almighty "short term" dollar. Stupid bean counters....

Brookster

Does this company own these trucks or are they leased? Chances are the one making this discussion doesn't have much fleet experience, what a waste of a good engine.

VADERPOWER

imo, there should never be any consequences for pointing out how utterly stupid management is!

d22019

Its a school district and they own all their vehicles. They usually keep them 15-25 years before selling them. Before you ask, yes everything is falling apart and no, nobody knows how to properly fix it They guy running it knows everything though, don't dare to question him .

SIXSLUG

Typical "desker" thinking he's got the answer to the company's financial woes, without investigating facts first. These guys are a cancer to a company, they think they know everything and are usually long gone before being discovered as the root of the problem.

I figure a cold engine has looser tolerances til things heat up to op temp, so everything is banging around each other doing damage, lubes are thicker and less likely to spread out and do the job.

I always let it idle and get the oil up top and don't hit over 1500 rpm till the temp gauge comes off the cold spot.

dodgeguy71

Know what I say, don't let them warm up. If the greenies have an issue with letting them warm up and your just an employee without having to worry about future repairs then I'd be like the other guys. Crank the key, put it in drive and hit the throttle.

You should let it warm up but like I said, it ain't your dime then I wouldn't even think twice about it. I went over my oil change by a bunch one time(on a company service truck). Told the service manager I needed to stop and do a service. He said, "we'll catch it after these calls". After those calls there were more calls, I'd tell him again and same thing. Finally I decided to stop wasting my breath, was not my truck. It's real easy for me not to care.