Short drives killing our 45's?

M

mctwist77

Member
Location
Mississippi
Car
2004 FX45
Quick question, on my BMW its not recommended to drive short distances, like under 5 minutes, because of the crank case ventilation valve can get clogged over time. So on the Infiniti will making daily short drives do anything to gum up the engine?

On a side note. Whenever I drive off base, I usually get the RPMs up fairly high just to burn off anything that might be building up internally.
 
No but it will induce fuel into the motor oil.

Excessive idling, stop and go traffic, and driving short distance has been known to show fuel in the motor oil in oil analysis reports done by BlackStone Labortories.

One way is to pull out the engine oil dipstick and sniff the motor oil. If it smells like gas you have some fuel dilution in the motor oil.

No damage to worry about but it does dilute down the motor oil which makes it less effective. This is why they recommend changing the motor oil more often when you take short drives, long idle times, and stop and go traffic. The fuel dilution changes the oil viscosity.

---------- Post added at 12:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:34 PM ----------

By the way if your wanting to look into it further do some research on short trips and fuel dilution on bobistheoilguy.com they pretty much beat this topic up to death lol.
 
I did not know that stop and go traffic would cause the fuel to mix with the motor oil. I learn something new every day. Thanks for this little bit of knowledge.
 
:good: Great answer Aaron. This response answer to questions that is yet to be asked to so many.
 
No problem. This will apply to any motor in general. The stop and go traffic effects it because you idle more when stopping.

This is also why black stone labs recommends to take a drive on the highway before sending in your oil to be analyzed by them because if you send it in just like that you run the risk of having fuel show up in the oil analysis reports.

I have since watched how long I let my car idle and taking short drives and since then my motor oil doesn't smell of gasoline as much as it use to. Before it use to reek of it. I also have a bad habit of moving my cars around in the driveway a lot starting and stopping and moving them to get another car out. I try not to do that as much anymore.
 
Wow! I never even thought that moving cars around can contribute to it. Learnt something new. Thanks Aaron! Gonna go see if any of my cars reek of gas in oil :)
 
What about excessive wear and tear on the transmission? I live on an Air Force base so everything is just far enough to drive to. So I drive like 4 times a day and 2 miles each time, is this hurting my car?
 
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