Stop and Start

jakeblu

jakeblu

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So, those who don't have it, do you still do it, do you turn off your engine when stationary in traffic?
 
No, and for some reason did not get on with one that did.[emoji849]
 
If I was in a long standing traffic jam, yes, other than that, no.
 
i do if i can see say 10 cars in front not doing owt, engine starts real easy
 
If it were an hour long queue on the motorway or similar, I might do. Otherwise I tend to keep the engine running until I've reached my destination.
 
OldCarlos said:
If I was in a long standing traffic jam, yes, other than that, no.
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This - not every car starts instantly, especially those not designed to do the stop-start thing. I would only stop the engine if I were unlikely to move for several minutes.
 
ancient_mariner said:
This - not every car starts instantly, especially those not designed to do the stop-start thing. I would only stop the engine if I were unlikely to move for several minutes.
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Also. The ones designed to do it have better batteries, alternators and starter type things. If your car isn't designed for it, you are probably putting more strain on those parts.
 
I'm with everyone else :)
We tend not to have traffic jams up here, so not much point in turning off.
Most cars are not designed for constant start/stop but I reckon this is the way to go, or electric...
 
Do have it and yes my missus uses it every day on her work journeys, why not save some fumes and petrol.
Roads here are crazy busy because of the new A14 scheme and will continue to be so until Dec 2020
 
I have it but switch it off because I dont like it doing its thing while the engine is still cold. Also it tends to cut out at give way and stop signs as well which is a tad annoying as you can often miss your gap because of the delay of the engine re-starting. Oh and once it stopped and wouldnt then start again which caused a mild panic. Simpler just not to bother with it.
 
tijuana taxi said:
Do have it and yes my missus uses it every day on her work journeys, why not save some fumes and petrol.
Roads here are crazy busy because of the new A14 scheme and will continue to be so until Dec 2020
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Those cars that do have it usually turn it on by default so every time you drive it has to be turned off - in ours it won't start working until the engine has warmed up a little. Most of the time I'm happy for the Mini to do the stop-start thing, just occasionally turning it off if the traffic is inching forwards. It can also make rapid acceleration difficult, with the turbo having to spin up first before the car can be booted a bit and the engine bogging down until that happens.
 
My Mazda 6 has it. I tend to allow it to stop if I'm not the first couple of cars at lights etc. If it's a slow moving queue then no. But then the Mazda has a pretty clever istop tech, controlling where the piston stops for easier/better restarting, combined with the i-loop system
 
gremlin16 said:
Also. The ones designed to do it have better batteries, alternators and starter type things. If your car isn't designed for it, you are probably putting more strain on those parts.
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It's unlikely to put anymore strain on anything. It makes no difference to anything mechanically nor electrically how long a period you leave between stopping an engine and restarting it.
My current car is the first I have had with stop/start. If I know I am going to need to move every few seconds I won't allow it to work. If I know I will be stopped for longer periods I will allow the system to do it's own thing. I did pretty much the same thing on cars without the system, I would just switch it off myself if I knew I wasn't going to be moving for a minute or longer.
 
DorsetDude said:
I have it but switch it off because I dont like it doing its thing while the engine is still cold. Also it tends to cut out at give way and stop signs as well which is a tad annoying as you can often miss your gap because of the delay of the engine re-starting. Oh and once it stopped and wouldnt then start again which caused a mild panic. Simpler just not to bother with it.
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If you are sitting waiting for a gap, surely you will already be in gear and ready to go anyway so the engine will already be running. Whilst it is true my car is only a month old, the start is instàntaneous. As soon as I dip the clutch to put in gear the engine is running before 1st gear is even selected. A Ford system when new should start the engine within 0.2 seconds. The maximum is around 0.8 seconds anything longer and something, possibly the battery is no longer working properly. I would imagine other car manufacturers systems would work to similar response times.
 
This is the second car we've had with it. Its implementation is much more workable on the second.But if you're stopped at a give way or a tight roundabout why let it kick in?
 
Had it for the last 5 years, just a normal part of driving now.

If I had a car without it I wouldn't bother trying to replicate the feature manually, unless stopped for significant periods of time.
 
boyfalldown said:
This is the second car we've had with it. Its implementation is much more workable on the second.But if you're stopped at a give way or a tight roundabout why let it kick in?
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You don't - you keep your foot down on the clutch ready to move away and it doesn't allow the car to stop.
 
Byker28i said:
You don't - you keep your foot down on the clutch ready to move away and it doesn't allow the car to stop.
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Which is exactly what i do. Although TBF I did test drive a car as these systems were coming in that used a combination of speed being 0 and no accelarator pressure
 
boyfalldown said:
Which is exactly what i do. Although TBF I did test drive a car as these systems were coming in that used a combination of speed being 0 and no accelarator pressure
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Yup, to be honest it's handbrake on, gear neutral, clutch out that initiates the istop (on a manual) on the Mazda. Keeping the foot down on the clutch keeps the engine running. The mazda has this clever system (I'm sure others do the same) of stoppign the pistons at the best place for restart and has additional iloop capacitors for short term charge holding, from regen braking etc to give that extra kick.
All I know is it returns around 45mpg from a 2.2 turbo engine :)
 
I turn my engine off on the z750 if at lights that I know will not change for a while if not it makes my legs a tad warm.
 
Byker28i said:
Yup, to be honest it's handbrake on, gear neutral, clutch out that initiates the istop (on a manual) on the Mazda. Keeping the foot down on the clutch keeps the engine running. The mazda has this clever system (I'm sure others do the same) of stoppign the pistons at the best place for restart and has additional iloop capacitors for short term charge holding, from regen braking etc to give that extra kick.
All I know is it returns around 45mpg from a 2.2 turbo engine :)
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It's not just the piston that will stop at an optimum position, the valves do also. Because Ford used Mazda engines, my RS Ecoboost engine is based on the Mazda 2.3, Ford engines also stop in the same manner.
 
I have stop start and if I know I'm going to be stationary for a bit then yes I use it. For short stops I don't bother as it's to much hassle putting it in neutral and taking your foot off the clutch.

I've had my car a year and saved 0.53Kg CO2 (I guess every little helps :D)
 
Totally yes.

My newer 63 reg car has it and I use it most of the time. Only time don't use it is during stop-start crawling traffic, because automatic means it'll stop when the car stops, can't easily control it using clutch.
My older 56 reg car doesn't have it, but I turn still off engine at lights I'm familiar with that I know I'll be waiting least 1 minute. Or whenever I don't need the car to be moving (eg. waiting for people)


The real question is, would you stop your car engine if you are waiting for people for unknown amount of time?

I see so many people leave their car engine running at train stations, in front of schools, in car parks. It's a total disgrace.
 
Byker28i said:
Off topic but I can totally recommend these products.
http://www.exo2.co.uk/

I'm on my second waistcoat, the first lasted about 12 years. Toasty warm body, so I didn't need heated gloves
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I have always have the heated gloves just morphed into them when I started having a few bikes and the gloves were better than multiple heated grips.
Not a big fan of the waistcoats as to be honest I like to be a bit cooler in the body, I wear a big Hein Gerricke Fluoro jacket which with its liner is pretty damned warm to the point I rarely wear much more than a long sleeve T shirt under it even in winter, main thing I find a pain is when the tank is full and the bike has been parked in the cold a while doesn't half make me nuts cold.
 
nilagin said:
If you are sitting waiting for a gap, surely you will already be in gear and ready to go anyway so the engine will already be running. Whilst it is true my car is only a month old, the start is instàntaneous. As soon as I dip the clutch to put in gear the engine is running before 1st gear is even selected. A Ford system when new should start the engine within 0.2 seconds. The maximum is around 0.8 seconds anything longer and something, possibly the battery is no longer working properly. I would imagine other car manufacturers systems would work to similar response times.
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Its an automatic.
 
You do realise stop start is not new,i had it back in the late 60s, bloody old fords stopped the engine every time i pulled up.:eek:

Got it now though and use sometimes, if it wasn't fitted i wouldn't do it unless it was a longish wait.
 
Thanks everyone for your thoughts. My car doesn't have it but was considering turning off the engine if likely to be stopped for more than a minute or so. @nilagin In a car that doesn't have stop start will turning off the engine for a few minutes regularly cause any problems?
 
I've had it on a couple of courtesy cars and I don't like it much. The cars I had it in only stopped the engine while the footbrake was applied and I was taught to always apply the handbrake while at a standstill rather than hang on the footbrake (a technique that is still taught to police drivers, I'm told).
Turning the car off for a few minutes shouldn't cause any problems as long as it has time to recharge the battery between stops and that a hot turbo is given time to cool before the oil supply is stopped.
 
Have it on my car, use it most of the time. Mines an auto so the engine stops when the car does.
Never had an issue with missing a gap as the engine starts as soon as a little pressure is taken off the brakes and it's up and running by the time my foot gets to the accelerator.

It also does not kick in if the engine is stone cold and sometimes will restart the engine after being off for a while before I remove my foot from the brake, I'm told it does lots of monitoring of thresholds and starts the engine prior to any of them being reached.
Oh, put the car in 'sports' mode and the stop start is disabled if you really want a quick getaway :)
 
jakeblu said:
Thanks everyone for your thoughts. My car doesn't have it but was considering turning off the engine if likely to be stopped for more than a minute or so. @nilagin In a car that doesn't have stop start will turning off the engine for a few minutes regularly cause any problems?
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If the battery is in good condition, it will do no harm at all, if the engine has a turbo, just make sure it has had a couple of minutes to cool if you plan on switching off after a hard and fast run. As I wrote before, it matters little to the car whether it has been switched off for 2 minutes or two hours before you restart it. In fact there will be more oil still lining the engine after 2 minutes than two hours. Will it shorten the life of a starter motor? In terms of the number of times it should start the car, no, it just means the number of years maybe reduced, but the chances of the starter motor failing are minimal anyway. Winter takes it out of a battery anyway, so if your car proves slow to start, then replace the battery at the earliest, whether you are performing your own stop starts or not.
 
wuyanxu said:
I see so many people leave their car engine running at train stations, in front of schools, in car parks. It's a total disgrace.
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And on offence under section 42 of the Road Traffic Act 1988.
 
nilagin said:
if the engine has a turbo, just make sure it has had a couple of minutes to cool if you plan on switching off after a hard and fast run.
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This I hear a lot but don't quite understand. At every motorway there is a long off ramp and at least half minute of driving to parking spot followed by a minute of careful parking. Plus you are not supposed to cut from outside lane directly to exit ramp. So that gives a few minutes from slowing down to shutting off engine, should not need to worry about cooling the turbo.

Of course, there's people who drive hard, then cut across 3 lanes into services and then stick their car into any spot without any care, taking up 2 spaces, taking less than a minute. I feel this knowledge should not be repeated for their purposes. ;)

viv1969 said:
And on offence under section 42 of the Road Traffic Act 1988.
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I looked it up, can't see how keeping the engine running violates that item. Please do explain?
 
wuyanxu said:
This I hear a lot but don't quite understand. At every motorway there is a long off ramp and at least half minute of driving to parking spot followed by a minute of careful parking. Plus you are not supposed to cut from outside lane directly to exit ramp. So that gives a few minutes from slowing down to shutting off engine, should not need to worry about cooling the turbo.

Of course, there's people who drive hard, then cut across 3 lanes into services and then stick their car into any spot without any care, taking up 2 spaces, taking less than a minute. I feel this knowledge should not be repeated for their purposes. ;)


I looked it up, can't see how keeping the engine running violates that item. Please do explain?
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The Act enforces rule 123 of the Highway Code which states: "You must not leave a vehicle engine running unnecessarily while that vehicle is stationary on a public road
Doing this can incur a £20 fixed-penalty fine under the Road Traffic (Vehicle Emissions) Regulations 2002. This goes up to £40 if unpaid within a given timeframe.
 
viv1969 said:
The Act enforces rule 123 of the Highway Code which states: "You must not leave a vehicle engine running unnecessarily while that vehicle is stationary on a public road
Doing this can incur a £20 fixed-penalty fine under the Road Traffic (Vehicle Emissions) Regulations 2002. This goes up to £40 if unpaid within a given timeframe.
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I think there was something recently that highlighted doing this outside schools filling up all those little lungs with diesel crumbs.
 
viv1969 said:
The Act enforces rule 123 of the Highway Code which states: "You must not leave a vehicle engine running unnecessarily while that vehicle is stationary on a public road
Doing this can incur a £20 fixed-penalty fine under the Road Traffic (Vehicle Emissions) Regulations 2002. This goes up to £40 if unpaid within a given timeframe.
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Theres a few "When necessary" and "unnecessary" in the highway code but how do you judge, as a driver, when it is necessary or not? For instance a main road that runs outside my Dads retired residences compound has a white hatched area in the middle of the road followed by a central reservation bit, then a roundabout. I looked in the highway code to find if it was acceptable to go into the hatched area and wait in order to turn right across oncoming traffic(when none's coming obviously) into the compound. It says you can "when necessary". Not really sure what that means so I do use it anyway, but if there was a copper in sight Id probably think twice.
 
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