There was an
interesting article in the Washington Post about two months ago that talked about a 94 Honda Accord EX that went over one million miles.
The prevailing view was that engines run longer when they are always running. That way everything stays lubricated and materials that might clog parts otherwise stay suspended and don't settle to cause problems. In other words, there weren't too many cold engine starts in the million miles.
This makes me wonder about the motor oil test that Consumer Reports ran on a fleet of New York City taxis that I read about in the CEG posts. Their results were that most motor oils work the same. I wonder if there was very little difference between most of the oils (including dino vs. synth) because of the fact that cabs are constantly running?
I believe that most other engine tests are usually done the same way (with the engine constantly running). Hmmm.....
Makes you wonder about the validity of all of these tests and their comparability with the real world.
