Engine cool down after driving?

EFI said:

Unless you are having mechanical issues during the drive, your car won't get hot that it would need cooled off. If you're at operating temp after the drive, just idling won't reduce your engine temp. If anything, it will go up due to less airflow.

So you achieve nothing by idling your car after a drive besides wasting fuel.

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Got it. Thank you for the information.

2015 Silver GT said:

My wife's daily driver has twin turbos. You think she's sitting there letting it cool down? Not necessary.

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HAHA

This is why we need to bring back highschool auto shop.

Eritas said:

This is why we need to bring back highschool auto shop.

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:amen:

Also, can confirm, there is no reason to idle a modern engine after a drive unless there are some extremely extenuating circumstances (and even those are limited to things like very hard track use under punishing conditions). The standards these engines have to meet for durability and performance while being used "carelessly" are pretty extreme.

Even on a race track, an NA car should be plenty cooled off to be able to shut it down after a cooldown lap and driving in the paddock to where you're parked.

No modern car requires a cool down, whether it be n/a, supercharged, or turbocharged. Turbos are oil and water cooled these days, so the temps stay down, unlike turbos of the past that were just oil cooled and you could coke the oil in the turbo if it didn't get to cool down. The other factor being modern oils. Full synthetic oils resist coking as well.

kms0567 said:

What I meant to say was if engine is shut down in high temp it could cause heat strain. Thats why I was told to cool off few minutes before shutting down the engine.

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Your not actually cooling the engine if you let it run - in fact the opposite might be true as there is no air cooling when stationary. If you are not sure, pull up the oil temp gauge and watch it for a few minutes when you idle.

Any engine thats been run at flat out needs a few minutes of normal running to dissipate some heat out through cooling system.

cking said:

Any engine thats been run at flat out needs a few minutes of normal running to dissipate some heat out through cooling system.

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That's true...and cooling is faster when the car is moving rather than idling, and will drop to the normal running range and hold there.

Even with new watercooled turbos, the clock the turbo so the convection effect would draw cool coolant to the bottom of the turbo when the hot coolant would raise.