Warm Up Time / Oil Temp - When is it ok to cut loose?

[Preen59]

Yes, but in an aircraft engine, it is under full load straight away. It is also generally under more stress for a longer and more consistent length of time.

In a full blown, high performance competition engine i'd consider a warm up procedure to be a good idea. Some people even put an element in the sump or oil tank to pre-warm the oil. But a road car? Not so critical. Now, i'm not saying that you should give your engine the stick straight off the mark, but leaning on it before operating temp won't hurt anything. In fact, you're doing some parts a favor.

This is typical of when you give people something else to look at. As soon as there is another measurement, they start to worry about it. If it wasn't there, no one would be talking about it.

[Transporter]

When using mineral engine oil some additives in oil have to reach certain temperature (by memory 70 deg.C) before they fully protect moving parts from metal to metal contact.

Today's synthetic lubricants protect the engine right from the word "GO".
As Preen59 said, don't get crazy with accelerator before engine oil warms up a bit and you'll be fine.

[iBoost]

I wait until it's around 80 degrees or so. Until then I generally drive gently and shift on or below 3000 rpm.

[ethosguy]

Prise is spot on.
Not only are you excessively wearing/damaging your engine and driveline parts you are probably contributing to probable oil leaks due to differential thermal expansion of materials. Beaings are typically steel in aluminium housings and can be sensitive to clearances...yo0u'll be prone to sucking/blowing seals for example.
I've been around machinery professionally for 25yrs. Cardinal sin mechanical abuse...and I've seen sackings and breakdowns from running cold machines hard.
It's true oil pressure is essential... even before increasing engine speed from idle; forget before flogging it...
Cooling down is just as important, especially on a turbo engine to stop cooking/uncirculating oil on hot spots creating sludge/tarnish in the most sensitive areas. Although VW seem to have post shutdown circulation pumps in our TDI Tiguan. I haven't bothered to find out if it covers water, oil or both?

Do you reckon BMW and others have electronic power output limiters for cold running (M5?) as a gimmic?

Believe what you will but my machinery will always be at operating temp (not coold, not hot) during hard work. I'll suss out the prior owners attitudes before buying used too...Best reason to avoid demo deals IMO, especiall for performance vehicles.

[Preen59]

Do you reckon BMW and others have electronic power output limiters for cold running (M5?) as a gimmic?

No. They have that because they have aluminium bores in the M5 V10.

[Ryan_R]

If I'm going for a drive I'll wait for the needle to point up at 90. If I'm late for work, I ignore the temp.

[ethosguy]

No. They have that because they have aluminium bores in the M5 V10.

I'm curious about your reasoning?

[Corey_R]

If I'm going for a drive I'll wait for the needle to point up at 90. If I'm late for work, I ignore the temp.

That's water temp though... not oil, which is only displayable via the MFD digital readout....

[Greg Roles]

For the record, in my TDI, it takes approximately twice as long for the oil temp to rise to the normal 70-80 degree operating temp on my gauge as it does for the VW water temp gauge to show 90 degrees. So if it takes three mins to show 90 on the VW water gauge, the oil is going to take about 6 mins to reach operating temp. Also, the VW water gauge shows 90 degrees +/- about 10 degrees!

Only a rough guide, but don't kid yourself that the oil is ready just because the water is.

[Corey_R]

and this is generally what happens with the oil in the petrol models too... the oil takes twice the length of time to get to its "operating tempurate" (which varies from model to model) as the water does to hit "90", and the water stays at "90" whereas the oil guage constantly changes depending on load.