mkgarrison5

exactly.. also remember when your motor is at operating temp doesnt mean your oil is at its operating temp also. i read an article somewhere and it said something to the affect that once your motor is at operating temp the oil will follow a few mins later.. so i basically drive smooth until about 10 mins after motor has reached operationg temp... besides i drive smooth anyway due to gas prices as noted above in Hans post.. besides this past weekend at an avg speed of 85 coming back from the mtns.. watched that needle go down quickly.

mkgarrison5

when its super cold is when you need to drive it quickly. about 30secs after start up.. drive slow for a longer period oftime. it will get the oil hotter quicker plus the oil will be flowing faster instead of idle.

icerunner

Man, I get pissed when I see people abusing there engines by racing a cold engine. Yet I must forgive their ignorance as they do not know the error of their ways...
THE WAY I ROLL : When its not really cold, I let the engine idle for about 15 to 20 seconds to let the oil flow go through a cycle or two in the engine. As the oil warms up, it starts to spread the heat evenly through out the engine. Then I begin to lightly drive for a minimum of 5 minutes. I almost take my foot off of the gas for the 1st minute of the drive and let the car's engine pull itself foward very slowly out of my court.
After a minute of light driving I give it some light amount of gas. It actually takes about full 10 minutes for the engine to completly warm up. So I keep the speed light to moderate between 5 to 10 minutes range.
Once the oil is warm, Oil flows faily quickly through the engine and oil filter and acually evenly distributes the heat throught the engine helping to warm things evenly. Even heat distrubution is very important in a Combustion engine as metal can expand unevenly and crack, cold metal can be very brittle.

Example: Hit a piece of metal hard enough with a hammer in sub zero temperatures and it can shatter like glass... Interesting stuff.