How bad is it to idle your vehicle for extended periods of times...

How bad is it to idle your vehicle for extended periods of times? I know a lot of police cruisers literally spend more than half their engine hours idling but I'm just wondering if I could idle my engine for 8+ hours in the cold winter nights without damage if done every 2 weeks or so.

Youneed to rev it every 15-20 minutes to 4x over idle to blow out accumulation.
Can't have excessive accumulation.

what about those people in the north who leave their cars running overnight so they don't have trouble starting in the morning?

People do that? Fuck, just plug it in lol

The harm is unnoticeable. Just check the oil occasionally

If your going to do this then figure out a way to make your car work for you overnight instead of wasting fuel.
>use truck as generator overnight to charge batteries to power house during peak hours.

I don't think anybody does that. Most people own cars with engine block heaters when they live in a cold climate like that.

You could use it to gas unwanted animals in your garage.

iirc cop cars have extra large trans coolers and stuff to handle the long idles

probably still fills your engine up with deposits anyway

How much fuel do you actually waste doing that? I remember accidentally leaving my old toyota running over the long weekend when rushing to the aeroport and 3 days later I came back to a third tank of fuel left.

i fell asleep idling in my subaru with the heater on and 7 hours later i had used about 1/6th of a tank.
depending on your utility costs it might break even.
could also put it on a dyno and leave it in gear and have it turning another generator with the wheels.

just remove the tranny and jam the dyno in there to prevent power loss

Well the intention is that you just want your car idling all night so it's good to go in the morning, so it needs to be ready to drive.

implying truckers don't literally idle for days

I wonder if a (very) big alternator would be more efficient than using the wheels to turn a dyno

Just thought you could lpg convert your car just for idling overnight, you wouldn't even need to install a tank or anything into the car, just plug it into a big tank at your house.

convert a petrol generator to lpg

bruh
what the cuck

those are diesels

>idling for 8 hours
>thinking he has a house
Yeah no. Needs to live in his car for 2 weeks and it's cold outside. No other logical reason to idle a car for that long.

What the fuck is going on in OPs pic?

Police cars have engine hour counters in addition to the odometer, so they can be accurately services as needed to prevent problems.

Also, they're tax payer funded fleet vehicles. The drivers give zero fucks about the vehicle's health over the long term because it owned by the department.

He would rather it always be warm in the winter and cold in the summer than care about the extended idle time damaging the engine.

AAVE is PC for ebonics.

Can I get a quick rundown?

He said (once) every two weeks, not for the whole duration.

camping, desu. that's what i want to use it for.

it was found on a facebook page that essentially stated that "bruh" is "African American Vernacular English" and using that term is cultural appropriation from black culture.

When someone asked how "bruh" is cultural appropriation, a guy said to google it and it isn't their job to expend "emotional labour" to explain shit to them.

Guy also got four likes for some reason.

What you think doesn't matter. Lots of people do that in rural Russia.

Guys with diesels up north where it's -50 have to do that. Even plugging it in and cold starting it is hard on the engine. The logging equipment up here needs to run 24/7 or it won't start even with ether.

What kind of logging equipment?

Also where are you that you're logging in -50 degree weather instead of the summer?

I don't words so good. My bad.

Why do you need to run your car for camping? Camping in the cold or are you using it to run/charge stuff? Would you be better off with a used generator? (there are ways to make them quieter).

Some cold places turn to mud pits in the month or two of summer that they actually see. Can't log through mud.

Also when it's that cold the snow cover generally isn't that thick, sometimes in spring they'll get huge dumps of snow though. That leaves: late fall/winter.

Ever tried starting a 1985 John Deere Skidder in -50C? I guarantee you'll only have "tried" because you wouldn't succeed. Between the batteries being cold and the diesel engine parts weighing a small continent the starter just can't do it, plus it's very hard on it and takes an hour to warm up anyways.

definitely

Shouldn't the timing belt have a cover

Hahaha nobody does that.
We have what is called a block heater.
We don't let cars run all night you dingus.

I do Idle 1 hour every day in my truck, i guess it's time to sea foam it.

like 4 different people just disagreed with you

In rural russia, engines start YOU