Quote:
Originally Posted by mario486
Hi Manicm, not sure I follow. I was referring to non-S/S cars being switched off. S/S cars are a different story, they are designed for it. I do still wonder though how effecient they really are if you switch off for a few seconds only, say in slow moving, unpredictable traffic.
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Sure, S/S cars are designed for it, but I wonder whether, on the long run, increasing the number of engine starts by let's say a factor of 5 or 10 over the engine's lifietime has really no effect on the wear and meterial fatigue, due to vibrations, pressure peaks etc. I have some mechanical engineering colleagues who systematically switch the thing off for that reason.
Another story is the real economy you make with the system. In ideal conditions, when you wait at every traffic light 5 minutes, it sure makes sense. But I noted that in normal city traffic, most of the S/S cycles last no more than 10s, so restarting the engine 10 times to spare in total about 1 minute of its running at minimum rpm seems ridiculous.