94 AQAZ 1.9 Jetta....long idle times ok?

[Vohaul]

He All,

Just a quick question...

Right now my jetta has something wrong with the battery connection (works sometimes, sometime car has no juice whatsoever, very hit and miss)

in Calgary, right now it is -28 celsius...my wife has to drive my jetta right now (i fell and screwed my knee, and the car is a 5 spd..so i cant drive it as i c ant push the clutch)....

she has to go to work tonight for a 4 hour shift....

my question is can i just tell her to let it idle for 4 hours...(to save her the issue that may crop up if it has to be restarted)?

it runs fine once it fires up and the cooling system is fine as well.....


Thanks

Paul

[8v-of-fury]

As long as the fan switch makes the fan come on if it were to get too hot.. which i highly doubt it will..

I would have no problem leaving my car running for that time in that weather. The little bit of fuel you'll be burning at idle for four hours, seems like a lot.. but its way better than the added wear multiple cold starts have on an engine.

Make sure you don't leave the cabin fan on too high of a setting.. or it will cool the engine down so far that it may not be able to sustain complete combustion..

Also, parking the front of the car out of the wind will help tremendously at it being able to contain its heat.

[wdkingery]

Let us know how it goes.. I've always wondered about this extended idling

[guy plain]

mine has sat idling for over 3 hours with no problems.....but i didnt do that on a daily bases either....and  i did it in +30c and -18c ....had to see how well the cooling system was working..had troubles last spring that seem to be long gone now!!!

[rabbitman]

I've idled for an hour with no issues.

I've always thought it would be cool to rig a low coolant level/overheat shut off.

[theman53]

Back in the 80s my mom was driving an hour and a half to work one way. In the winter, she didn't have a block heater, and had probably 0 good glow plugs. She would get it running and leave it idle all night so she could get to work on time. The only issues she had was she went through a couple alternators. This was a winter long ordeal.

[Vohaul]

Update:

Sent the wife to work ... It idled for over 4 hours... She came back to toasty warm car
.  No probs....

I've since fixed the battery issue And it's warmed up.... But nice to know it works, eh?