quote:

Originally posted by dlc444:
If your car has a sports mode, put it there.

I had a Hertz rental (BMW 5 series) with this "feature." Sport mode took care of it, plus a bit more fun to drive

You can program BMWs to start in Sports mode, did this with the wife's X3.

No shutty offy

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
Now, if your car has to start 30 times a day instead of 7 times a day , are they making the starters on these cars some kind of super human ,high tech, Science break through that extends their life?

Are people buying starters every other year?

how much gas can a car at Idle burn in the 24 seconds you sit at a light?

The starters are probably designed for this type of use. I expect that when you go to replace one for, guessing, somewhere over 500 dollars you will be comforted by that. Yeah, they will wear out because the car makers don't care, they want the revenue generated by these schemes.

BTW, IMO the car makers, EPA, and NHTSA are all in bed together. One reason that cars are being phased out is because they have a "poor carbon footprint". Had a VP of Ford Engineering tell me that. What he couldn't explain was how a freaking F250 Dualy could have a lower "carbon foot print" than my Fiesta ST. One gets 15 mpg in the city and one gets 32 mpg and the 15 mpg monster produces less carbon? Yeah, I know the F250 can seat 6 versus 5 very friendly folks in my Fiesta but come on the numbers just don't add up. BTW, the EPA is who set the "carbon footprint" for both and you can be certain that palms were greased for this bullshit to get passed.

As for how gas you can burn "just idling" it's actually more than you would expect. I have a fuel tattletail in my Fiesta and got stuck in traffic for 15 minutes due to construction. In that 15 minute stop I watch my average fuel mileage drop from 33.4 mpg to 30.6 mpg. At idle with a 4 stroke gasoline engine there is a fairly high level of Vacuum in the intake manifold and that means that more power is required to bring the piston down during the intake stroke. As a result of these vacumm losses normally aspirated 4 stroke gasoline engines are actually most fuel efficient at about 3/4 throttle and have the poorest fuel economy at idle. However, going back to the 500 dollar plus starter I expect that a careful Cost Benefit analysis would reveal that not shutting the engine off at every stop is much less costly than these "fuel savings" schemes. Yeah, your are getting SCREWED by these "green" schemes.

I would suggest that you NOT purchase a car or truck that employs this particular scheme. If you want to piss off a salesman to get a bit "even" then tell you are looking for a vehicle that does NOT turn itself off at every stop. When he asks why, ask him to get an estimate for the COMPLETE cost for replacing the starter. When he come back hat in hand just say "now you know why".

Here's an automotive engineer to explain it for you:

https://youtu.be/dFImHhNwbJo

Tl;dr 7ish seconds is the breakeven point. Idling longer than 7-9 seconds, ore field efficient to shut the car off and yes the started are designed from the start for the heavier duty cycle.

The only vehicles that should start/stop automatically are golf carts.

Get used to start/stop, it's the future. Only a matter of time before all vehicles do it. It wouldn't be so bad if they would move to 42v electrical systems and make the A/C systems all electric.

And they don't even save gas. I have an F150 that doesn't have this "feature" and rented a new one that did, otherwise identical models, and the rental got worse mileage by about 1 mpg.

If I ever have to get a car with this stupidity, I'll find out how to defeat it before I buy the car.

I’ve got it in my Audi A4. I like the system, but mine doesn’t shake the car or turn off climate control. I can also game the system at a stop depending how hard I press on the brake pedal. Really comes in handy in downtown traffic or in line at the drive thru.

My car also has regenerative braking so while I’m coasting it helps my battery charge up. I keep hearing how bad this system is in BMWs and other cars, but thankfully Audi’s mostly nailed it. So far, the computer is more likely to leave my car running in most circustances.

My BMW has it. Fortunately it also has an override selection that "saves" so it remembers my preference.

^^^^ That I could live with but if it auto defaulted to being back on every time I stated the car...nah man.

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:
My new F150 does it. There is a switch to bypass it for the time the truck is running. Turn off the truck, hit the button again, and so on. Or the engine and ac die at a stoplight.

I wedged a wad of paper in between the switch and the dash so I don’t have to keep doing it.

I talked to ford and they say that the truck would have to be reprogrammed to keep the truck running- and they won’t do it.

I fucking hate it. If I wanna burn dinosaur juice, it’s my dime! And I want my ac to run all the time!

There are a number of hacks to disable this function on your F150

F150 hack

One annoying stupid idea. Saves nothing when you figure the need for a new starter and battery and what that cost the owner and the enviourment.

My engine is a twin turbo and the manual goes in to great detail about letting the car idle for a bit after running hard because those turbos are oil cooled. You don't want to shut down without having a chance to get cooler oil through them. Shutting the car down between red light seems contrary to their own warnings.

quote:

Originally posted by SHOOTIN BLANKS:

My engine is a twin turbo and the manual goes in to great detail about letting the car idle for a bit after running hard because those turbos are oil cooled. You don't want to shut down without having a chance to get cooler oil through them. Shutting the car down between red light seems contrary to their own warnings.

The first thing that comes to my mind after reading your post: I hope that the software designer for this vehicle considered this, and specified that the automatic engine stop should take the turbo temperature into consideration.

Bad for the starter and the engine. A good portion of engine wear occurs at startup.

That has become part of my pre-flight on two of my vehicles.

Seatbelt - on
Auto S/S - off
Lane Keep - on
Heated Steering Wheel - on

It becomes automatic.

Another of a multitude of reasons why these days I prefer to only buy old (and their simpler tech) cars. My wife OTOH...

Sometimes it would be nice to have certain modern amenities like built-in GPS and Bluetooth, but that's something my phone can fill in for, or I just live without.

-MG

Unfortunately, practically every new vehicle has this wonderful green feature and we're stuck with it now. It's annoying during normal driving but what about people driving in heavy stop and go traffic everday. You know everyone in that situation just got tired of it and is turning it off.

Hopefully the new 4Runner does not have this stupid feature. More stupid stuff from those who know how to protect everyone and every thing. Absolutely stupid shit.

If your car has a HOLD switch, try, after coming -almost- to a stop
activating that. And than do not touch brake or gas till 'you' want to.
Works on my wife's car (when I do it--she never knew the car did that).

quote:

Originally posted by monoblok:
Another of a multitude of reasons why these days I prefer to only buy old (and their simpler tech) cars. My wife OTOH...

Sometimes it would be nice to have certain modern amenities like built-in GPS and Bluetooth, but that's something my phone can fill in for, or I just live without.

-MG

Same here. After swapping in an Alpine navigation radio, I was able to pull a U-Connect harness out of a minivan and put it in my truck. It was followed by a DVD changer and screen to keep my nephew occupied on longer trips. Somehow arcade games showed up, and then I put in a backup camera later. All of it set me back about $300 and a few weekends.

It may be easier to add your desired features than do without them.

Between the half dozen or so gun and car forums I frequent, I've probably seen this same rant with all of the same responses two dozen times. What I have not seen even once is anybody who actually had a problem because of this feature. Not once.

I remember similar rant threads when contactless ignitions started to become popular. Very similar complaints. It'll break when you need it, it'll be expensive to fix, you won't be able to start your car when it's cold, all very predictable.

I wonder if there had been internet forums when electronic fuel injection came about where people would have bitched about "trusting a computer to mix my fuel."

Same goes for power locks, power windows, hell even electric starters ("why would I want an expensive electric motor starting it when I can turn the crank for free?")