how long does a starter last?

[frankeng2003]

gas is getting expensive. so i started to turn off the engine during excessive idleing periods, ie red lights, major traffic jams. I know that its the law in california, you have to do it in california. What im wondering is will this cause premature wear on the starter? how long would a starter last if you kept turning off the engine, and restarting it like 20 times a day?

[VivienM]

gas is getting expensive. so i started to turn off the engine during excessive idleing periods, ie red lights, major traffic jams. I know that its the law in california, you have to do it in california. What im wondering is will this cause premature wear on the starter? how long would a starter last if you kept turning off the engine, and restarting it like 20 times a day?

Aren't you also likely to kill your battery?

[mlc2000]

gas is getting expensive. so i started to turn off the engine during excessive idleing periods, ie red lights, major traffic jams. I know that its the law in california, you have to do it in california. What im wondering is will this cause premature wear on the starter? how long would a starter last if you kept turning off the engine, and restarting it like 20 times a day?

Where do u live ?

[frankeng2003]

i did this when i went across the us boarder. major line up at the us customs boarder. 45 min wait.

[seftonm]

California doesn't require people to turn their engines off at red lights. A starter should handle the extra work without much fuss. Do some reading at cleanmpg.com

[mrlooneytoon]

In my opinion, starting a car is probably the one thing that takes the most effort 'mechanically'. Lots of things have to start working at exactly the right time at once to get a car started, so doing this more than necessary is definitely going to kill something faster than usual.

If I were you, I'd idle. Idling is about $2 gas for a whole day of driving if you all your fluids are topped up?

Hopefully I'm not using false logic.

[Whitedart]

gas is getting expensive. so i started to turn off the engine during excessive idleing periods, ie red lights, major traffic jams. I know that its the law in california, you have to do it in california. What im wondering is will this cause premature wear on the starter? how long would a starter last if you kept turning off the engine, and restarting it like 20 times a day?

If the engine is maintained and easy to start, I don't believe it will cause significant premature wear.

I use my own vehicle for work and make an average of about 30 stops a day. I don't leave it running on these stops about 2-4 km apart, and have not had a worn out starter problem because of this over a large number of years.

I see courier drivers (UPS, Fedex, etc) that appear to make about 20 stops an hour, and do not ever seeing one borken down with a worn out starter. But their fleet vehicles also seem well maintained.

[ES_Revenge]

Of course you're going to wear out things faster if you use them more. If you start your car 20 times a day compared to two times a day, as a matter of fact, you are wearing that starter 10 times as much. That much should be plainly obvious. Whether that is going to cause a starter to fail earlier is another story, but most likely it will. The more weaar you put on something the more quickly it is going to wear out. All things being equal I mean--say we say that exact starter on your car will fail after so many cycles--if you start it 10 times as much it will fail sooner. Of course starters don't exactly work like that but you get the idea.

Plus starters don't like heat really. So when your engine is all hot and you shut down and start again, that puts additional stress on the starter because you're using it hot all the time.

More important than your starter though, why aren't you thinking of your engine??? You put more wear on your engine during startup than you probably would in driving 1000s of kms with the engine running. Once that oil drains back into the pan the engine has no protection. That's always going to happen at startup and yes it's designed to be started but doing it ten times as much, per day, on a daily basis is not a good idea.

You'll likely end up wearing the rings out quicker for one thing, losing compression over time and having to rebuild the engine sooner than you ever would not doing that nonsense. What's funny is you could end up burning oil after wearing out the engine, and you'd just be polluting more, not less. Everything has a trade off and that's one thing the environmentalists always conveniently seem to ignore. You might be burning less fuel somehow doing that, but later when you're burning fuel and oil, that's not going to be any better. Plus most cars run in an open-loop type mode for at least some time after startup, in which they typically burn more fuel until going into a closed loop type engine management mode.

Anyway I would be a lot less worried about a $100-$300 starter and a lot more worried about having to face a $1000+ engine rebuild/replacement bill...

[yao416]

One time I saw my dad's friend driving his car. When he stops he puts his gear to "N", and I ask him Why you keep gearing it to "N" and he say, YOU save gas.

Is it true?
I dont know if it make sense.

[Pete_Coach]

Actually, the answer to the OP's question, "how long does a starter last?" is 1, 347,057 starts or 957 days. Give or take a bit, weather permitting.

[frankeng2003]

so its not a good idea to turn off the engine during idling periods right?

[Samir]

One time I saw my dad's friend driving his car. When he stops he puts his gear to "N", and I ask him Why you keep gearing it to "N" and he say, YOU save gas.

Is it true?
I dont know if it make sense.

For most automatic transmissions, not really. This question comes up often in Car Mags.

The stop/start thing comes up all the time too. They say cold starts are what causes the damage, hot starts on a well-maintained car are fine. They cite the Prius as a good example, as the Hybrid Synergy drive turns the gas engine on and off quite often and the Prius still pulls off bullet proof reliability.

I don't kill my engine anywhere except the Lacolle border crossing into the U.S. and when I get stuck at a railroad crossing. It has more to do with laziness than anything else.

[VivienM]

so its not a good idea to turn off the engine during idling periods right?

Doesn't the government say to turn it off if you'll be idling over 30 seconds?