Warm up time on 2011 Highlander

[RSDAKOTA]

I am considering a new Highlander with a 3.5L engine. How quick is the Highlander at warming up. I live in South Dakota and our mornings are sometimes -20 degrees or more. I have a 2009 Impala that warms up in 10 minutes left idling in the morning. My kids in college each have a Taurus that after 10 minutes are still very cold. Would the Highlander warm up fairly quickly left idling.

[PhotonDreams]

Here you go.

It's 15 deg. outside today and I decided to find out how much time the temperature of the engine on my '08 Basic Highlander would take to reach its normal peak. I used the Garmin ecoRoute HD device to grab all the info from the engine analyzer port. It feeds about a dozen pieces of info, plus any codes that might pop up, via Bluetooth, to several models of Garmin's Nuvi GPS. I leave the thing pluged in all the time now.

Just letting it sit and idle the engine temp started out at 32deg.
Min. 1 - 52 deg.
Min. 2 - 75 deg,
Min. 3 - 82 deg.
Min. 4 - 95 deg.
Min. 5 - 100 deg.
Min. 10 - 122 deg.
Min. 15 - 136 deg.
Min. 20 - 144 deg.

After that I hit the road locally at about 40 mph. In a mile it went up to 186 deg.

Now I must say that once up and cruising I have to leave the heat dial about a half inch to the cool side to keep the temp from getting too warm.

[becks]

Well..here in the Northeast when temps are in the high teens I sometimes use my auto-start. It will run for about 8 minutes before shutting off. From there it takes 5 minutes before the heat kicks on with the auto-climate. Not sure if that helps you. Without using the auto start she will start pumping out heat after about 8 minutes. Typically I don't use the auto start unless it is very cold and there is frost on the HL.

[Ed-Pa]

You can reduce the warm up time greatly by putting on the recirculate button, during warm-up (starting out)....less outside cold air into car. I do this for a short time and take off the recirculate because the windows start to fog up a bit with recirculate on.

In 15 degree outside...parked in attached garage.....have nice heat in about 3-4 minutes....then I take off recirculate. Experiment.

[RSDAKOTA]

Thanks to all who responded. It looks like the engine warms up quite quickly. This will help in my decision.

[nannahill]

So happy to be in TX after reading these posts. But no SuperBowl weather jokes, we're over those.

[nov0798]

"You can reduce the warm up time greatly by putting on the recirculate button, during warm-up (starting out)....less outside cold air into car. I do this for a short time and take off the recirculate because the windows start to fog up a bit with recirculate on."

This really has no bearing on how fast the engine heats up. If your really concerned about it, have the optional block heater installed, and itll be warm from the start.