I have read many times its best just to let vette sit while in storage, since I can not drive while in storage is it ok to start up if I need to move to other spot in garage? Should I let it run longer or just start and move then shut down? Should I let it get up to operating temp prior to shut down?

Curious about this please let me know what ya think?

Thanks!

 

Of course start it up to move it if you need to. Just remember you better have a battery tender on your car for the winter.

Now, here in Az we use tenders too but since its currently 75 degrees we are still out driving!

 

The issue is that exhaust gas contains a lot of water vapor. That’s why vapor clouds come out of your tailpipe on cold mornings. When you start your car, a small amount of that water vapor ends up as liquid water in your oil because there’s always a bit of piston blowby, and when cold, some of the water vapor in the piston blowby condenses into liquid water. Once present as liquid water, weak carboxylic acids will form from other components in the exhaust gas. Getting the oil temp up to 160 or 170 will drive off the liquid water and break down the acids. It’s oil temp that matters, not coolant temp.

Having said that, will starting once in a while and then shutting down without getting the oil hot destroy your engine? Of course not. If it did, there would be a whole lot of destroyed engines out there, including new car lots where it’s certainly not rare for cars to be repositioned. But it’s clearly hard on the engine and on the oil. So it’s a judgment call. Do you want to put some added stress on your engine and oil by shutting down cold, or do you want to go to the trouble of getting your oil hot, which will probably require driving. Idling in the garage will get the coolant hot, but it’s the oil temp that matters, and idling may not do that. If you do decide to accept the risk of cold shutdowns, I’d suggest that it gives you a pretty clear answer to the question of whether and when to change your oil relative to winter storage. Do it in the spring so that any degradation in the oil from the cold shutdowns will be flushed out.

 

This is why I Believe in leaving old oil during storage.Fresh oil change at the end of Corvette Hibernation.Why Contaminate new oil with condensation during winter to spring temp.changes.
I would suggest the least start ups.Why start and add condensation.
If your garage is heated? Then obviously their would be less moisture added to oil.
The argument is,It will burn off.Yes with starting and driving.
Starting,idling then sitting...No Thanks
This thread got interesting and mixed:
https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...il-change.html
Everyone has opinions,That's the good about this forum

 

Thanks for all replies, would like to add I normally change oil prior to driving when it comes out in april or may. Will keep startups to a minimum as usual, just wondering

 

 

I wouldn’t worry about condensation or “breathing” during storage for two reasons. First, water by itself isn’t much of a problem. The harmful things are various carboxylic acids, and they require both water and exhaust gas to form. So if the engine isn’t started, even if you did have water present, you are missing the exhaust gas, so acids can’t form. Water by itself won’t do significant harm to either the oil or cold engine. So maintain your existing and correct concern about starting your engine without letting it get hot, but stop worrying about condensation out of the air from day/night temperature differences.

To complete the story, the other reason not to worry about condensation from the air is that the quantity of water that can enter the engine that way is teeny. It’s a bit tough to explain why, and if you don’t care, stop reading. But if you do care, read on. Many people think about heavy dew and visualize dew forming inside the engine during storage. But that can’t happen because neither of the two factors that drive dew are present. With dew, you have a virtually unlimited supply of moist air drifting by, but with the internals of an engine, you have only the teeny bit of air that gets sucked in by day to night temperature difference, and it can’t carry much water. And even that teeny amount of water usually can’t condense. What forms dew is that on nights with little wind and few clouds, you can get enough radiant heat loss to the dark sky from the grass (or windshield, or some other surface) to cause that surface to get cooler than ambient air temperature, and more importantly, cooler than the dew point temperature. Being cooler than the dew point is what causes dew to form, and it requires radiant heat loss to the dark sky, which in turn means that the surface on which the dew forms must be exposed to the sky. But your engine isn’t exposed to the sky, it’s blocked by the hood of the car. So while dew can form on the hood, it can’t form on or in the engine. The one unusual exception to that statement is that you can get a bit of condensation on nights where a cold front passes, with cold dry air. For that one and only one night, the air inside the engine can be moist from before frontal passage, and a bit of moisture can drop out. But if you look up the required numbers, it would take years of sitting around to get even one teaspoon of liquid water that way.

 

I'm sure this is debatable (seems like i am doing that! ). But, if I was going to start up the car and move it around for several minutes, I wouldn't want to "store" the car with 3,000 mile oil in it. I'd like new oil in it especially if I don't move the car at all!

Yes, it will get dirty (ier) after starting and stopping the car during the storage months. And if it's bad enough (meaning, enough times of start/stop/move), I might want to change the oil in the spring before the car came out of storage. Actually, I have done that in the past. jmo

 

My logic for the case of a person who tempts fate with the brief startups is to attack the enemy I know (the admittedly small quantity of acids that are 100% certain to have formed after the brief startups), rather than a preemptive strike against an enemy that may not exist (changing what should be pretty clean 3000 mile oil before). So I’ll stick to my preference to do it after if you’re only going to do one or the other. But if you want to be ultra conservative and do it both as an extra insurance policy, it won’t hurt anything. And of course that logic doesn’t apply to the more common case where a person doesn’t do any startups during storage. In that case, I don’t see any compelling logic for before versus after, or for that matter, for necessarily doing it at all.

 

^^. What if the oil has 6000 miles on it in the fall, would you still leave that in there for the storage period? I wouldn't feel comfortable at all doing that, I would much rather have clean oil. And if there happens to be any moisture in the oil come spring time, I know it will be gone after the first long drive anyhow

 

Like the previous comments, this applies only to the case where the engine has been started briefly in storage. I’m not worried about the water. As you say, once the oil gets hot in the spring, the water and any associated acids are driven off. What I’m worried about is that the oil has potentially been exposed to carboxylic acids from the brief startups over the winter, and may have degraded from that exposure. Just driving off the water and acids in the spring won’t necessarily reverse the degradation. It’s not a high probability risk. The pH stabilizers in the oil should have been able to take care of it. But the older the oil was at the start of the winter (and thus the more depleted the pH stabilizers were), or the more times it had brief startups, or the poorer shape your rings are in (hence giving more piston blowby in the brief startups), the greater the odds that there will have been acid-related oil degradation.

Of course I recognize that I didn‘t directly answer your question. Is mileage X or time interval Y ok? Where are the cutoff points? Beats me. There are way too many variables affecting the answer. You just have to apply knowledge of those directional effects to your situation and do what seems sensible to you.

 

New oil or "dirty" oil makes no difference when stored. Nothing needs lubrication when idle.

The only considerations are:

1) Your 1-year anniversary since last oil change is going to happen during the storage period, and you want to ensure you're complying w/ service requirements for warranty reasons, or

2) You choose to change your oil now rather than later.

 

I'd add a third potential reason from the concern in my last post, namely, that if you briefly start the engine while in storage, you should at least think about the potential for acid-related oil degradation. I had originally reasoned that in such cases, you should change oil after storage to purge any such degradation. But then Patman's question made me think of a concern that may also have been behind AORoads concern, namely, that fresh oil does have more potential to resist acid problems since it still has its full load of pH stabilizers. But the best answer, of course, is not to briefly start the engine while in storage, then it reverts to your two items.