Oh man. Bad day. This mornin I get up to go to work, 5:40 I start my car to warm up (I let my car warm up 5 min before I go ALL THE TIME) For 1.5 years I've been warming it up in the morning. I get out, go back inside (its cold). 5:45 I come outside....and my doors are locked?! I'm like WTF!? That's never happened before. I called AAA and they said 2.5-3 hours before they could make it to my house. All this time my car is on with my CD Player. I go to work via taxi, and at like 8:30 my dad calls and said AAA finally came and slim jimmed my car. My car had been idling for 2.5 or so hours. I get home, take it out, and now I hear a whining noise. Before when I rev, when RPMs fall back down it would give a metallic hiss. Now when the RPMs fall, it sound like i'm goin in reverse. People, you dont think that it idling for like 2.5-3 hours has done something do you? I know I'm not paranoid, I hear the difference. Its whining faintly while I drive until I pop it into neutral, then it vanishes. Think something could have messed up, it being on so long? Ugh, this is long. I hope its notin. Thanks for listening to my rant and any opinions/suggestions? I prob. take it to my mechanic soon.

PS.
AAA sucks

 

is your car a stick or auto

if stick it dont make any sense that it would whine in gear but not in nuetral since i assume it was in nutral when parked

please tell me youve alreaddy gotton accouple of spare keys made i cant believe people dont have spare keys laying aroud ive got one on my keychain, one in my walet, one in the kitchen and one duct taped to my cars frame rale hidden so no matter what happens i could never get locked out

 

at least they opened your car! unfortunately, i dont know what idling too long can cause....don't know how cold it is where you are, but if you must warm before leaving, here's a hint: get a remote start.

edit: subs, you got a key in your frame rail? shouldn't be telling everyone y'know.

 

MY car does that all the time, if just the driver door is open, and i close it it will lock all doors, so anytime i leave it running I put the window down enough to be able to unlock the doors. It's happened a few times but lucily my window was down

 

does it sound like alternator whine?

 

well first of all you should always have your windows down if you leave the keys in the car.. you never know if your accidently going to leave your keys in the car... and shouldn't you have a spare key?

 

Yes yes. Ive learned my lesson with the spare key, my dad made sure of that. I have a manual. Its about 35-40 degrees in Northern Virginia. As for the whine, it might be an alternator whine. It sounds like the whine you get when you go in reverse. Its faint. I dont know if its the alternator, it was checked about 1 week ago and it was fine...think this incident could have toasted it?
Also...I cant get remote start (or I dont know if they made one for stick or not). And I dont like rollin the window down cause its cold out. Thats the reason I leave the car....toast up inside. I wont be doin that again. And yes, I had a couple extra keys made.

 

Nothing is going to happen to an engine that idles for long periods of time. There's no load on it, it's running at low RPM's at operating temperature well lubricated by your oil pump. As long as your cooling system is working correctly you can idle all day long.

 

I agree with njmaxseltd...

Nothing bad can happen to your engine when idling (as long as everything in your cooling/oiling system keeps working...)

 

Yup, my car has idled in excess of 2 hours in the winter multiple times, I have had no problems to date.

 

also, my car doesnt lock if the door is open and the key is in the ignition, is this a feature that was discontinued after 97?

 

My 98 will not lock the doors with the key in the ignition and the door open either, I showed my wife this feature after she locked the keys in her car with it running

 

haha thats too funny

 

that's what baffled me about this situation...i've been locked out once, but only because i locked the passenger door (which locked all of 'em) while the key was in the ignition (car wasn't running). had to use the trunk pass-thru to unlock one of the back doors; but if the key is in the ignition and you try to lock the doors while one of the front doors is open, it should immediately lock & unlock.

i don't know what your car's doin' Juki....

 

Idle for 2.5 hours is nothing. During the Northeast blackout in August, I had my car idle for 8 hours with my AC turn on. The only thing that's missing from my car is a couple of gallons of oil.

I kind of notice that my car will lock its door once a while. I just roll down my windows just in case. Is good on a nice cold day but sucks when is raining or snowing.

 

police cars idle all day long seven days a week all year.. you don't see those braking down on the side of the road.

 

What I do to make sure this doesn't happen is I take my key off the key ring to start the car while my dog is doing his business. Then I put him in the house and lock the house. That way I've got the key fob still on the keychain.

 

I have my key on a quick disconnect from the rest of my keys and the key pad! By doing this I am able to start the car then lock the doors. Very convient when the car is out of sight!

 

A mechanic told me once that police cars, or any automatic car, can get tranny problems because of this because they are sitting idle for so long the tranny fluid begins to boil and the fluid level goes down because the fluid turns into a gas like when you boil water and it becomes steam. Is there any truth to this?


-Steve

 

Auto trannies have a fluid cooler in the radiator, and the radiator fan does blow air through it...
Although, sitting idle with the tranny in Drive possibly does heat up the fluid, since the torque converter is slipping, but I doubt it's enough to heat up the fluid just sitting there, especially with the radiator fan pulling air through the radiator...

 

I can take out my key from the ignition even if the car is running. So I just start the car, take out the key, lock the door, and come back out later.

 

If you're locked out and you want to stop the car, can't you just block the exaust. Shouldn't that stall the engine? But then the battery will probably die if you left some stuff on. Just a though

 

Darn near ANY car can have a remote start, bro. Manual, auto, diesel, fossil fuel, electric... you name it! I've been in the installation biz for 15+ years, and I've only had ONE car I couldn't put a remote start in - and that was because it was a POS!

Since you've learned your lesson about the spare key thing, I won't harp on it.

 

Just for future reference...you can call the fire department and they can get in your car for you a lot faster than it will take AAA to come. My friend locked his keys in his dad's car and called the fire department and they came in about 30 minutes and just got the window down and got in.

 

I'll throw in a comment about over-idling a car; my neighbors have a Ford Explorer that the wife remote-started every mornng at LEAST 15 minutes before she even walked out the door. Last winter during our huge Mid-Atlantic snowstorm in April, the auto tranny went up on it and their pickup was only 4x2 and didn't move. They weren't pleased.

I have heard before that its not good to let an auto tranny sit there and heat up but I'm just sharing my neighbors experience. I don't know the mileage on my neighbors car but it can't be that much, its fairly new.

They parked it down the street near my Max, they bought a Honda Pilot. Must've seen my bumper sticker mentioned Hondas ability to hit 300k.