FD as a daily driver?

[buckman67]

But can someone please tell me scientific or technical details of exactly what harm it does to a car to be used like this?

Not overly technical but applies to all engines.
Engines are designed to run at an optimum temperature and reaching this optimum temperature cannot be achieved constantly running short distances. The water temp guage may say its running to temp but the oil takes longer to reach its running temperature. If the engine is constantly run " cold " then the engine metals don\'t expand fully, the oil viscosity is higher ( thicker ) and the fuel does not vapourise fully. If the engine constantly performs in this condition this leads to accelerated engine wear , higher fuel consumption and a carbonised engine ( poor running ).

Bob

[Rich Cheung]

I use mine daily and drive 0.5 miles to work and back and never had any problems over the last year doing that. There are reasons other than me being lazy...lol. I generally leave the turbo timer on in the morning so it gets to operating temp before turning off + lots of spirted driving at weekends :driving

Rich

[RemarkLima]

Rich, no offence meant, but surely you can walk half a mile in less time than it takes to warm up the car, drive there and cool it down again? Unless I\'m missing something?

[buckman67]

I use mine daily and drive 0.5 miles to work and back and never had any problems over the last year doing that. Rich

Running a car constantly over short distances is not a short term problem. The car may not perform as well as it should in the short term because of carbon build up but it will not suffer major failures because of constant short trips. The effects will be seen in the long term in the wear and tear on the engine. It may need replacing/ rebuilding sooner due to the accelerated wear.
Its really a huge variable as a car completing short journeys but well driven and looked after could survive a lot longer than a car badly driiven and abused over long journeys.
Any car well driven/maintained, regardless of what journeys it undertakes, will out live any Vauxhall !!

Bob

[Rich Cheung]

RemarkLima Rich, no offence meant, but surely you can walk half a mile in less time than it takes to warm up the car, drive there and cool it down again? Unless I\'m missing something?

Sounds lazy I know but the reason is to get home at lunch, walk the dog, eat and get back within the hour. If I didn\'t have the dog Id walk, well probably.

Rich

[RemarkLima]

Ah no worries, thought there may be a reason... Could you not walk the dog to work and erm... Leave him in your car... Which is now at home... Hang on a mo\'

[Martiny]

Its really a huge variable as a car completing short journeys but well driven and looked after could survive a lot longer than a car badly driiven and abused over long journeys.
Bob

My point exactly. There are too many variables to make a sweeping blanket statement like " short journeys are bad for a car ".

This car was designed by Mazda to be a road car. I cant see any problems with running it 2 x 6 miles every day.

A quick calculation tells me this engine will see 3000 miles a year. lets say the scare merchants reckon a shortened engine life to what, 40k instead of 60k? The car is going to last 13 years !  Now, if you can afford the insurance etc, wouldnt you rather drive an FD every day, rather than some D reg diesel Peugeot?  

And, you\'ve got a nice weekend car into the bargain !

[elford_tim]

Well, in my particular case we\'re talking 2x4 miles/day, but only for about 4 months out of twelve; the rest of the year I\'ll take the bike to work anyway, just when it\'s cold and nasty I don\'t and go make SouthEastern richer. So that\'s less than 700 miles/year spent commuting, but in the worst weather as well.

Problem is that I don\'t really want to drive the FD to the station if there\'s ice on the road which means I\'ll probably end up with some crappomobile anyway, but at least I don\'t need to absolutely have to buy one.

[FLAT4MATT]

Just a quick bit of personal car history...

This time last year i had the two bugs (which are both quicker than the FD) and a sensible daily car. A brand spanking new SEAT Ibiza 1.2 which i got for the grand sum of £7k, plus £800 for the 17" OZ Super T\'s ands Toyos. Looked respectable enough and i was getting 50 odd mpg.

Got VERY VERY bored with it while i was rebuilding the bugs motor so sold it and got the FD.

Granted i get a 5th of the fuel economy from the FD but the SEAT lost a grand in a year, used as much oil and i even had some minor engine starting problems in the cold weather. The ride was no better, nor the road noise (probably due to the wheels...) and it bored the hell out of me!

I\'ve gone down the sensible car root, and it was BRAND new and i still honestly think i\'m better off driving the FD. As for the comment about them being more fragile, i dont think they are at all. Yes they need rebuilding more often but i think over that period it\'ll be far less likely to let you down than any piston equiped counterpart of the same age. There\'s not much in the engine itself to go wrong, other than the affore mentioned wearable items.

Try driving a fiesta diesel the same way you would an FD and see how long it lasts

Thats the way i see it anyway :Santa

[elford_tim]

Well, I\'m beginning to lean towards using the FD as a somewhat daily driver once it\'s run in properly...

Mainly on the assumption that if I keep it for a few years then the money I have saved not buying crap station cars will probably be enough to pay for an engine rebuild anyway...

[Martiny]

enough to pay for an engine rebuild anyway...

Yes, and we have seen no evidence at all from the scare merchants to support their statements.

[G@NDY]

Just something from my experience. When I bought my car it was fitted with a kenlow coolant warmer kit, fitted by Pip. The engine let go at 42k, but it was a few months after getting the rebuild done that i phoned him up asking him about this warmer kit. I told him my registration and he said he fitted it because the other guy was a plonker, and drove the car 3 miles a day without warming it up and kept flooding it etc, and pip was fed up with towing it back to WGT and fixing it. He told me that short journeys are big killers for these engines.

[elford_tim]

I guess I should probably ask the guys who\'re building my engine as well :Hammer.

I have no doubts that using an RX on short journeys will shorten the life of the engine, much as it will do it for any other car as well. Of course part of the problem is that nobody knows by how much it\'ll shorten the lifespan (plus there\'s the other school of thought that leaving the car unused for several weeks or longer doesn\'t do it any good either) - if I split my time between using the FC and using the FD, I\'d probably do something like 7000-8000 miles/year in the FD. If I only get 40k out of the engine then we\'re talking five years here and I have only one vehicle (a very rare motorbike) that I\'ve kept for that long. Mind you, unless I decided to sell the FD to buy something like a classic Ferrarri for my pension pot, there isn\'t much out there to replace it that isn\'t stupidly expensive. But I don\'t even know if I\'ll be in the UK in five years time so that\'s all a bit academic.

[stylus350]

In my personal experience, cars I don\'t drive often are more problematic than the ones I do. They are built to move. Leaving them standing seeems to create problems.

[Stu.Wilson]

Hi ya bud, i used my FD as daily drive and for the first year it was only a 8 mile round trip and it never caused any problems. the only extra expense i incured was some tw#t keying the car by the station. But i always took it out at weekend for long drive and never really much of an excuse to drive it somewhere. haha

just my thoughts though, enjoy the FD.

Stu