Hot take: idling a cold diesel for 20 minutes in winter does more harm than good
Every guy on my crew in Fargo swears you gotta let a cold diesel idle for 20 minutes before you touch the pedal, and I did that for two winters straight. Last January I finally put a block heater on my 7.3 and started driving easy after about 2 minutes of idle, and my oil analysis at 5,000 miles came back cleaner than it ever did with the long warm-ups. The old heads say I'm gonna wash the cylinders, but the numbers say the opposite, less fuel in the oil and way less soot. I think all that long idling was just caking everything up and wasting fuel. Anybody else run a block heater and short idle up north, or am I gonna eat these words next cold snap?