How to Start a Car in Cold Weather

Video Transcript

"Don't you just love cold weather? Yeah. Hey, Rick the driving instructor again. We're talking about starting your car in cold weather. All right. Number one that we have to think about is that the day of the auto choke is over with. Right now with all the cars these days you put the key in there and you fire the mother up and if your battery is good, it'll go. So the most important thing is make sure you got a good battery, got enough cranking power to turn the engine over. Once it fires, you're good to go. Now the thing to remember though is you've got to let the rest of the engine warm up just a little bit. That oil has been sitting at the bottom of your oil pan over night. Since the last time you drove. You want to let the engine run about one to two minutes to let everything go and the oil to circulate through the system to get everything nice and lubed and ready to go. The worst thing you do is just fire it up and jump in and put it in gear and take off. Okay. At least a minute or so to warm up, also in that cold day, hey, you know, you want to warm the interior as well. You're sitting inside that car, so you want to make darn well sure you know that you can also warm up the interior a little bit. So maybe five minutes is okay. Bring that extra cup of coffee in there with you and drink on that cup of coffee. At the same time you're letting the car warm up, maybe it'll take about five minutes or so. So, the most important thing to remember is is that when you start it up, this is a machine, you just can't start, jump in and go, you want to start it up and give it a little bit of time to warm up, it's going to warm up to the situation before you can actually put it in gear and be on your way."