dgwhitten

I have an 05 C2 that I use as daily driver. I am moving from the suburbs, with its 30 minute commute, to in-town where we will live about a 2 minute drive away from the office. Will a pair of daily 2 minute drives be bad for my car? Thanks

MrBonus

Lots of cold starts and not letting the engine warm up to operating temperature is never good for an engine.

Nine9Sixer

repetitive cold starts are mos def not good. there was an article about oil changes in a recent Excellence that discussed this.

i don't know if you ride bikes, but i'd kill for a bike commute like that. think of all the gasy/wear 'n tear you'd save, let alone the health benefits. or perhaps a motorcycle or vespa . . . .

OCBen

And how.

A 2 minute commute - that's like a 10 or 15 minute walk. I would definitely be walking just for the exercise. Or riding a bike provided I can strap my brief case on it.

I have about a 50 mile one-way commute and my biggest concern is trying to make it to the end of the week on just one tank of gas after filling up on Sunday night.

ELUSIVE

In the words of Supertramp....Take the long way home!

Nine9Sixer

oh, how i share your pain. my commute is also 100 miles both ways, and that's absent all those little trips inserted therein. i can't drive 55, so i'm fillng up at least 2x/week. i've been daydreaming of this elusive 2-minute commute for the last hour.

NorthVan

I agree take the long way when ever you can just to enjoy the car. I would get the battery maintainer for your Porsche Dealer, I had a problem with mine about a month ago were I lost the power on all electronic controls exect for wipers and HVAC, turns out that the low battery caused a brown out of the computers and the dealer needed to do a master reset. I now plug it in every Friday night for about 24 hours and it should help the battery out.

As for walking or taking a bike, I thought about it and decided against it, why have this Porsche and not drive it, even if it is for 2 minutes! I will be moving in July to a longer commute, and I am looking forward to the extra seat time!

robbonds

we all basically have the same number of cold starts - its just not all of us drive long enough to have the car warm up

ELUSIVE

I don't have a 2 minute commute. Mine is 10 minutes! LOL

dstrimbu

Yeah, I would say that 2 minutes won't even get the oil temp off the peg.

Maybe you could take the fast way in in the am, and take a longer drive home to boil the condensates out of the oil... that would be my main concern.

Nine9Sixer

haha. nothing shameful about a 2 minute commute. let's me get on to other things . . . . like watching tv.

OCBen

Ahhh, it's good to commiserate with another sufferer.

I get up at 4am to be on the road by 4:35 to have a clear shot on the freeways, where I'm averaging close to 85 mph - often hitting 90. I make it here by 5:15 and I leave at 2:15 to beat the LA traffic coming home, which is always heavy but moving steadily at that hour.

I wished my Mini Cooper had a bigger tank than the 13.2 gal one it has. I average close to 30 mpg combined, but if only I had an overdrive gear I wouldn't be running at 4500 rpms while doing 90, which is what kills my gas mileage.

Hey, I too was just daydreaming of this 2 minute fantasy commute. I was imagining walking out of my home at a normal time when the sun is shining and walking the few short blocks to work, briefcase in hand.

Nine9Sixer

this is good therapy. i can really feel your pain. although, traffic here's not LA-like enough for me to get out by 4:30am. but on those days when i'm commuting from nyc, my commute, depending on accidents or just randomly heavy traffic, can be as long as 3 hours! otw, it's about 1/2 that. i also like to cruise at 90mph- appears to be my natural equilibrium.

when not driving the 911, i use a bmw 325it, which b/c of its shorter gearing and no 6th gear/od, i'm also at 4500 rpms at 90mph. also kills my mpg, which all round is 24mpg (still not that bad). strange, our parallels.

in the end, though, strangely, it's my unpleasant commute which helped me justify 911 ownership. i love to drive, spend too much doing it, but i've come to rely on that time to decompress after work. otw, i'd come home and beat the dog, i think. so why not splurge a bit more on transportation? anyway, i'll feel a little better today going home knowing that someone else in their 911 is feeling/thinking the same thing.

OCBen

Time-wise, my commute is shorter than yours simply because almost my entire commute is on freeways and very little surface street travel - about a mile to get on from where I live, and an exit/onramp right outside my company's campus. Takes me about 40-45 mins in the morning and at least an hr to hr and a half coming home.

Took the 911 to work just once, shortly after I had bought it to show it off to a few coworker friends. On my way home a flying chunk of plywood off a flatbed truck hit the front, damaging my front end - oh well! . . . But that's why I bought the Mini to take the abuse of the commute.

Edgy01

I have reverted to rarely taking the car to the office (4 miles away) as it's only a 10 minute commute. It is not helping the car at all. If it wasn't for the SS exhaust, that would be the first thing to go,--rusting from the inside out. I suspect, however, you're not keeping the car that long, right? So then, why the concern?