How long could a car last if you never turned off its engine?

[rc5]

Either running or parking.

 

[RedRooster]

Till it ran out of gas.
Was this a riddle to test our brainpower? What do I win?

I would be tempted to say that modern cars could conceivably run a very long time without being shut off(disregarding the refeuling topic), if they were kept moving(for cooling purposes). In fact, I'd hazzard a guess that 100000 straight miles on a vehicle may be possible if the car ran ideally as the manufacturer built and designed them. If a gasket went 20000 in that'd be it, but if nothing went wrong(the chances would be very low ) and it was cooled properly, it could run very long.

 

[geno]

who knows, a while. Depends on the engine. Look at NASCAR and F1/CART, they run their engines at damn near redline for at least a couple hours straight with no problems, how bad could a production engine do @ idle?

 

[crab]

Dunno, but Mobil did that here in NJ with a few cars for quite a while I believe, no idea how it turned out though.

 

[Rifter]

Till it runs out of gas, pretty simple.

 

[sohcrates]

cop cars are left running almost all the time (except when off duty)...but they have to change the oil all the time because of it.

so i guess as long as you kept up with the fluids, it could run for quite a long time.

 

[Ladies Man]

i remember a bmw with 3 million miles on it

no engine problems... just kept it running

 

[Danman]

<< i remember a bmw with 3 million miles on it

no engine problems... just kept it running >>



Wow, that is a lot of miles..........

 

[trmiv]

Starting the engine is where a lot of wear comes from, so if you kept an engine running constantly, that wear would be saved. The problem would be, if you kept the engine running constantly, how would you change the oil or oil filter? That would eventually be the engine's demise.

 

[chuckieland]

i thought car made by today,
that you didn't have to turn off engine to refill gas?

 

[fastz28]

<< how would you change the oil or oil filter? That would eventually be the engine's demise. >>



Just use slick-50, Prolong, or other snakeoil. No need to change oil.

 

[apoppin]

You still have to change the oil eventually.

I imagine you could change the oil and filter with the engine running but it would be pretty messy.



Changing the spark plugs would be a problem as would other maintainance (timing belt, water or oil pump, etc.)

You would eventually have to turn it off. But I imagine it would actually last a (tiny) bit longer (timewise/mileage) if it was shut off ONLY for maintainance/repairs. Engines don't need "rest".

 

[MajesticMoose]

idling for extended periods isn't very good for engines. It would probably last much longer if you varied the throttle speed some.

m00se

 

[b0mbrman]

Till there's no longer gas in it...uh...I'd say 250 miles or so?