Does your car struggle to get going in the morning? Are you somebody who regularly warms up their vehicle before driving? If so, this article is for you.

When your alarm sounds and you are woken from a peaceful sleep, it’s likely that you either hit the snooze button and go back to sleep for a precious extra few minutes or you, at the least, stay in bed to stretch and prepare yourself for a cold morning. However, when it comes to your car, it’s expected to be ready to drive straight away.

Give Your Car a Better Start on Cold Mornings

Unfortunately, your car isn’t going to benefit from a hot shower or a few cups of coffee. However, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t something you can do to help it get going on a cold morning. Below is a great post from Ed Welliver written for motorists who struggle to get their car started in the morning or find that they need to warm up their engine for longer and longer each morning.

What’s Happening Under Your Hood?

The best place to start is with a quick lesson in engine basics, and what happens underneath your hood each time that you switch on your ignition. As soon as you turn the key, a multitude of parts leap into action. These parts vary in shape and function, but they all share one thing in common. They are all made of metal. As your engine rumbles, these metal parts are grinding, sliding, pushing, and even pulling at each other to keep your vehicle moving. Now, if you can think back to your high-school science classes, metal interacting with metal is going to cause friction. And friction works against your engine in a number of ways. The best defense your engine has against friction and the problems that it can cause is engine oil. This is the primary fluid that either you or your mechanic pours into it regularly. Once inside, your oil makes its way through your engine’s system. As it flows, it coats each of your engine parts with a thin, yet protective coating. When this coating is working as it should, it prevents friction by facilitating smooth interaction. A grind turns into a smooth slide, etc. Click here to buy Signature Series 0W-40 Synthetic Motor Oil and minimize friction in your engine and reduce engine damage in your engine with a synthetic oil change in TARGET. To learn more about how a quick-and-easy synthetic oil change can benefit your engine and your cold morning starts, speak with an expert at Ed Welliver by calling (956) 458-9399 or check out the online store.

How Long Do You Warm up Your Car?

It doesn’t matter when you learned how to drive or what type of vehicle you used when learning to drive, the first thing anybody likely taught you was to let your engine warm up before you start moving. In theory, this makes sense. After all, you likely aren’t at your best until you have had a hot shower. But what does warming up your engine actually mean? If you use conventional oil in your engine or your oil is coming to the end of its lifespan, the cold weather can cause it to retract from the small spaces inside your engine and around your engine parts, resulting in clumping throughout your engine. When this occurs, your engine parts are unprotected until your oil can once again return to a thin consistency. To do this, it first needs to warm up. This means that when you are waiting for your engine to warm up, you are actually waiting for your oil to warm up.

So My Engine Is Actually Unprotected While I Warm up My Engine Oil?

Until your engine oil can warm up and cover your engine parts once more, your engine is running unprotected during its warm up. This can cause two serious problems:

• The first is engine wear. You’ve likely heard your mechanic say these words right before you they handed you an expensive bill. This is caused by small pieces of each part being chipped away as each unprotected part interacts with another. Over time, each part becomes too damaged and needs to be replaced.
• The second is a reduction of your engine performance. The small pieces mentioned above don’t dissolve, and instead make their way through your engine’s system where they can become lodged in between other parts, preventing each of your engine parts from operating correctly.

A Synthetic Oil Change in TARGET Can Help

The best way to prevent engine damage during a cold morning is performing a synthetic oil change and replacing your conventional oil. Unlike conventional oil, synthetic oil isn’t susceptible to the cold. This means that, as the temperatures drop, synthetic oil maintains its consistency, providing protection not only when your engine isn’t even running, but also as soon as you start your car each morning. To find the right products for your engine, speak with an expert at Ed Welliver today by calling (956) 458-9399. Experts in the field, trust in their extensive experience and knowledge to find you the right engine oil for your needs.