the thing that realy kills an engine, gas or diesel, is the constant increase and decrease in RPM's. if the RPM's were constant the engine life would be much greater.

what hurts you the worse with short trips is the engine has not fully warmed up, also you run the risk of washing down the cylinder walls which will score the pistons and the cylinders since you are not getting full combustion from the fuel.

 

The reason they say Idling is bad is because your not getting your engined oiled like you should. I always let my pickup set for about 2min before I take off and when I drive I'm always running around 18-2000 rpms cause its where I run when on the highway most the time. I've always understood your pistons groove, so its best to run rpms you run most the time so they run in the same area/revolution zone. As for turning your pickup on and off its going to happen so dont fret over it. My pickup has been ran hard and easy and still runs like new.

 

I don't believe you have to get them up to operating temperatures when running around town, but unlike a gasser (and even those have some problems with it, but compression is not as big of a factor as on a diesel), a diesel need to warm up a little bit to allow the rings to seal up, just like drew said. The biggest difference between a car and our trucks in the engine... have you ever seen a 1.8l TDI (VW's diesel engine) out of a car? It is TINY... well relative to our CTD... And they are made of particular alloys that soak up heat quickly and therefore heat up VERY quickly, in comparison to our trucks. All around they have less mass to bring up to temperature, and that is why it isn't nearly as big of a deal. As for it being a big deal on your new truck: you are going to drive how, where and for what time so don't worry about it. If you do a LOT of short trips then maybe you won't have a million mile club truck... but it will still last a long time. Just don't get into it when it is cold, take it easy. Don't ONLY do short trips, which is bad in any vehicle... the carbon build up needs to be burned off every once in a while, so take it out on the highway...
Keep in mind, that if it were a huge deal that Dodge, or Cummins would put out a warning, like they do with idling for <15 min...

 

There ya go Sereguial.. that's the type of explanation i was looking for! .. That makes since to me... To be honestI wasn't too worried about the short trips or extended idling. If it was something to seriously worry about it would be in the owners manual. I bet a good portion of these trucks are driven more like cars than work trucks. My truck is mostly used for towing on the highway.. but when it is used around town it is almost always for short trips. The townI live in is only 1 mile square.. EVERY trip is a short trip! lol

 

If any of you have an after market oil pressure gage you will notice it takes about 2-3 seconds to start coming up but when it dose its at about 60-65 PSI cold 45-50 hot I think thats plenty of oil at idle, but thats one start up cycle without oil for 2-3 sec (Lucas Heavy Duty Oil Stabilizer helps) as far as warming up goes its the thermal stress thats your problem the faster you heat up your engine the harder it is on it because different types of metals expand differently causing stress so if your not pulling a load and heating it up fast then you should be ok but still it is good practice to warm up any engine before driving it, Chevy's aluminum heads and iron block are a bad combo, also to properly break in your CTD you should warm it up and pull a pretty heavy load a couple of times after your first oil change to seat the rings properly and don't worry about rodding on it to much unless you have a very heavy load or especially when in low gear. The CTD engine is one of the most durable engines on the market so not a lot is going to hurt them.

 

Whoa! We dug this one out of the cellar. The last post to this one was almost exactly a year ago.