I was wondering how long should i let my car warm up before i drive it to prevent flooding

 

I give it ~2 minutes before I shut down if it was cold when I started it. To drive I leave it alone for 5 miutes idling so everything comes up to temp.

 

During winter months I let it warm up for about 10 minutes and summer months I let it warm up for about 5 minutes.

I always let it cool off for at least 4-5 minutes before shutting the engine off.

 

Why? There's no good reason to. All you're doing is wasting gas.

 

Unless its a TII in which case it's not a bad thing at all to let it sit and idle for a bit, 4-5 minutes is overkill maybe though. Mine goes for 3 minutes as thats whay my turbo timer is set for.

 

I can tell you this, the longer you leave your car idling the hotter the engine bay is going to get. I have done a lot of things to see what temps do in certain situations. I tried this on three or four occassions and every time I let my car idle I get one degree "F" rise every 8-12 seconds it idles. That means your increasing your temp by around 20-30 degree's. I am sure you thought you were letting it "cool down" but your doing the opposite. Your letting it warm up.

Santiago

 

I think people are also under the impression that they have an oil cooled turbo (ONLY oil) however this is not the case. Since its water & oil cooled, then theres really no reason to let the car idle down because the water is going to take the heat before the oil can cook in the lines.

I have a turbo timer and at the most I use it for 30 seconds after a hard run so I can inspect for glowing exaust, smoke or otherwise leaks new found leaks.

 

As elfking has mentioned, that's just not needed for water-cooled turbos unless you've been driving very hard and just stopped. For normal driving even a minute is overkill.

 

i Believe i've read in the faq to allow the 30 seconds of cool down, had something to with the turbo and intercooler cooling off? i'll look for the link.

 

So, another words you think I'm running it way too rich?

Because when I shut it off after a minute or so, my car won't start.

My procedure is based on my theory(?) of depressurize fuel in fuel rack and cool off the turbo.

FYI my temp will not go beyond my normal temp even idling for 10 munites (of course I'm talking about stock idiot gauge, though )

 

10 minutes is overkill, even for winter. On the really cold days as soon as the guage started rising (5 minutes) it's warmed up.

 

Mixtures have nothing to do with this.
Hot flooding is usually caused by leaking injectors and/or low commpression.
Your theory is miles off. The fuel system is under pressure any time the engine is running. That's just how EFI works. At idle the fuel pressure should be about 30psi. If you want to depressurise the fuel system, you need to switch off the fuel pump while the engine's running and let it run out of fuel. A fuel pump kill switch is an effective temporary band-aid for flooding problems, but it is not a fix.
That's only the coolant temp. The heat from the coolant is rejected into the engine bay, so everything else gets hot.