Bayn46 said:
I don't like to sit in the driveway and let the car idle, you are only warming up the engine that way. Taking a calm drive, below 3k rpm, for the first few kms is how I do it. That way, everything warms up together.
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This is correct. I spoke to a BMW tech some time ago about warming up the diesel engine from cold start. He mentioned, that in the old way, the right thing to do was let a diesel engine idle for a few minutes before driving off cautiously, while the car got up to operating temperature.
Newer cars and better design means that idling it, just warms up certain components. The ideal way is to drive your car slowly without over-revving it for a few kms, while the block, diff and everthing else warms up as well as the oil.
Cooling off period on the diesel turbo or other turbo'd car seems to be the topic of much speculation.
Also, be mindful that for those who drive their cars for very short distances every day, the cars oil almost never gets up to operating temperature. The risk is developing sludge from the oil, which basically ceases the pistons up and you get ZERO acceleration. I had this problem on my previous E90, where my return distance each day was 8kms.
After 6 months of this, the engine developed sludge and had to go into the dealership.
The engine was taken apart, stripped of all the sludge, and reassembled.
The E90 and E90 LCI do not have an oil temp gauge. You can check from a secret menu each time, but this cant be easily done on the fly all the time either.
You can find out how to do it here:
http://www.bmwfanatics.co.za/showthread.php?tid=9294&pid=91700&highlight=hidden+menu#pid91700
