[Tundra-nuck]

As a contractor my Tundra 5.7 can sit for long periods idling. Sometimes up to 12 hours at remote sites. Is there any potential of long term impacts? I run full synthetic Mobil1 and do my changes at 10,000kms. TIA

 

[Dragos28]

i doubt it.

 

[Labdoc9]

You might want to consider a service schedule based on operating hours hours vs. odometer reading.

 

[aweskelo]

Everyone says idling is bad, but "everyone" has very little evidence - mostly theories/heresy. I've never heard of a Tundra dying from idling. I think the engine hours vs mileage for oil changes is a good idea (@Labdoc9).

I believe there exists a calculation for hours to miles somewhere on the interwebs...

 

[dforlenza]

Ford equates 5,000 mile intervals with 200 hour intervals in some of their manuals. given the Tundras 10,000 oil change, 400 hours of run time should be sufficient for oil changes.

I don't mean to sound ignorant, but why would you leave your truck idling for 12 hours..? is it a temp thing? I always thought that was more of a diesel issue, with not turning them off so they restart.

The way I see it is idling is still run time, and needs to be treated as such when calculation maintenance intervals. I don't see how it is any worse than the engine being under load. I think it just goes unaccounted for, and adds to engine wear without people adding maintenance.

 

[UNTMatt]

If you're idling that much, you need to do maintenance on a much tighter interval schedule. Oil changes could easily be every 30 days. You'll need to do some research on sorting that out.

--Matt

 

[Labdoc9]

Back in the 80's I ruined an engine in a car my folks had by forgetting to shut it off. Was in a driveway, 120 F, Arizona. Overheated and seized up.

The references to prolonged idling I can find talk about the dangers of not reaching operating temp and going over temp. Both have their dangers. The same holds for oil pressure, mainly, the damage done by under pressure.

I don't know if an idling Tundra has either of these problems but it wouldn't be hard to monitor. Obvious wear and tear on pulleys, belts, bearings, fluid life, etc have to be factored in.

 

[Powertechn2]

Pull a sample of oil and send it in to be analyzed. Then you can see how the oil is holding up at hours vs miles.

 

[tacopower]

Nothing will happen to your truck. When it’s idling - no stress on the engine. Even if you were to stress it say high idling at 1k rpm, the only thing would occur is more frequent refueling.

Tundra has 10k intervals - maybe you should it it every 3k. I don’t follow that crap anyways - always 5-6k for me regular oil only - no syn.

With that all said - I don’t see any reason anyone would want to idle their truck more than half hour - I’m cheap and dont want to waste fuel lol. Letting my diesel idle is something I don’t do either. I only let the trucks (tundra and diesel) idle and warm up if I have my wife or baby girls with me to keep them warm or the cab cool.

 

[Wynnded]

I'm thinking that an oil analysis might be the hot tip. If you're speaking in kilometers, I'm guessing that you may be in Canada where it's normally really cold. The only thing that I might be interested in preventing is gasoline washing the cylinder walls, though I don't know if that's even a rational concern in a modern engine these days. And this only because you may not be getting everything up to "normal driving temperature". I'd think condensation in the muffler would certainly shorten it's life.