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I believe German law (someone from Europe correct me if I'm mistaken) forbid stationary warm-ups, so I can see why they add that statement.
Yes, it's true that to reduce wear and tear, you should have the vehicle up to operating temperature as soon as you can. And it just so happens that the way the thermostat/coolant flow is setup, the vehicle warms up much quicker while in motion. I believe the quote was 10 secs of stationary warm up for manual transmission BMWs before moving it, and 30 secs for automatics. But I've never taken that to heart (especially keeping in mind the notion behind the German law -- most likely geared at reducing pollution, since the 1st 20 minutes of vehicle operation, before full operating temperature is achieved, yields the highest level of CO -- as with the way catalytic converters behave here in the US). I believe you should still give your car some time for all the oil to circulate to all moving parts of the engine before even shifting to "drive." Thus I usually wait for about 1 minute or so.
Either way, I believe the core problem here is that the gauge jumps to the "red zone" immediately after startup...or in my experience, usually within about 10 secs or so. Despite moving the vehicle immediately afterwards, the problem does not go away. The only "cure" is to turn the vehicle off and back on. I believe this is purely a low-temperature-attributed sensor/electronic glitch (unfortunately, the same sensors that tie to cabin climate control operations), and nothing physical in terms of thermostat or coolant flow operations.
Last edited by Lotus Man; 02-07-2007 at 03:33 PM.
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