Is it okay to leave your car running all night?

[Rojer]

I did a quick search but didn't really see the answer.

Sometimes I find myself sleeping in my car for various reasons but with the turbo on the new civics I was wondering. Would be it okay to leave the car running all night with the AC on and sleep in the car? I wouldn't do it all that often but this is my first Turbo.

Couldn't find crap about this online just a bunch of people arguing with no facts just because

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[ParkwayDrive13]

No. Prolonged periods of idling is bad for your motor.

 

[Rojer]

I mean I'd like to hear some reasoning behind it. I can google "its bad"
And I'm wondering really about the Turbo, is it worse for that?

 

[Unibrow Tail Lights]

https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/3ceibq/is_it_ok_to_leave_an_engine_running_overnight/

 

[latole]

1-You could be intoxicated by the exhaust.
2-It is know long time Idle is not good for engine

 

[SoFloCivic]

I spent maybe 40-50 mintues idling while in the backseat the other night with my date. I knew idling isn't good for the engine but she said she was hot so I let her turn the car on. I should be ok right?

 

[Rojer]

I spent maybe 40-50 mintues idling while in the backseat the other night with my date. I knew idling isn't good for the engine but she said she was hot so I let her turn the car on. I should be ok right?

Apparently you're already dead. Or your Car is.

 

[myke]

I'd crack the windows and get a small fan...

 

[gtman]

Hmmmm. Sleeping in the car and leaving the car running all night with the A/C on? Talk about lousy MPG!

 

[charleswrivers]

I've heard cop cars that idle a long time can have their cylinders take an odd wear... where the cylinder will get slightly out if round. I have also heard many have (or at used to have) an oil cooler added. Many cop cars you'd see on the used market will have pretty low miles when compared to their running hours, which you'll never know. I don't see any of them boiling smoke out of them, so I expect their rings/cylinders are doing well, and those fellas make it their business to sit in an idling car hours out of the day, over the course of YEARS. I've never heard of idling killing turbos, and have sat for many hours in turbo diesels w/no issue. Only issue I ever heard was beating on a turbo car and shutting it off w/o a cooldown period, which is what the turbo timers used to do for you.

As long as you don't do it in an enclosed environment, where carbon monoxide might kill you/make you sick, idling a car for an hour now and then shouldn't have any noticable effect. Even an all nighter shouldn't ruin a car. I've done 'freeze protecting' on crops, where I'd be up all night w/my dad turning on and maintaining pumps to put an ice layer on our crops so they wouldn't die. We'd sit in those trucks all night idling most of the time to be warm. Our farm had a couple 1990-ish Chevy W/Ts with whatever V6 they came with. They were run hard, not maintained particularly well, spent many days worth of hours a year at idle and all lasted well past 10 years and 250k of some of the hardest miles you can put on a vehicle. One did burn a bit of oil at it's EOL, and I know one of the two went over 300k. Neither had any engine work done and one had a tranny need a rebuild.

 

[darkness975]

I spent maybe 40-50 mintues idling while in the backseat the other night with my date. I knew idling isn't good for the engine but she said she was hot so I let her turn the car on.

LoL , I can only imagine what was going on.

@Rojer I won't ask why you have to sleep in your car overnight, but I am sure idling all night long is not good. If you do have to sleep in the car you are best off to get some thermal blankets and such to stay warm. Maybe run it a few times for a few minutes to warm up the cabin if it is really cold, but 6 hours of continual idling is not likely to be good for it.

 

[weigle2]

I spent maybe 40-50 mintues idling while in the backseat the other night with my date. I knew idling isn't good for the engine but she said she was hot so I let her turn the car on. I should be ok right?

LOL So you let your date turn both you, and the car on? Wow, she's a keeper.

 

[CivicXI]

I had a lancer ralliart with essentially a de-tuned evo 4b11t 2.0 turbo engine. I beat the snot out of that thing for like 140,000 miles.

In the end, the motor had a slight groaning sound if I went full throttle at below 2000rpm (lugging the engine) but other than that, it ran fine, didn't burn a single drop of oil.

Here are the things I've done "wrong" according to most people:

Shift at 4000rpm within a minute after driving it.
Shifting at 5000rpm daily.
Change the oil at 6000-9000 intervals despite the manual calling for 3000 and despite the engine spending hours at 4000+ rpm.
Keeping the oil filter in there for 2 oil changes (12-18k)
Drive it sideways for extended amount of time (hours on end on back country roads during winter storms across multiple states when the highways were closed)
Going airborne multiple times in the car.
Excessive idle (I'd sleep in it at trail heads when I showed up late after work).
Short drives (for about 2 years, i had a 7 mile back and forth monday-friday mostly on city streets).

The only thing I didn't do was down shift too quickly or rev it up too quickly (like, in neutral going from idle to redline) because it was bad for the timing chain to accelerate it like that.

A car's just a car, do what you want and enjoy your time with it, stop worrying about whether it'll make it to 500,000 miles vs. 250,000 miles, you'd be bored by then, and trust that the engineers have built in enough safety factor.

What I would recommend you do is buy a cheap carbon monoxide detector and put it in your car if you're gonna sleep in it.

 

[Rojer]

Hehe to all the people asking about just wearing blankets. I live in Texas. Heat is never a problem

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