Cold start vs idling

[in2trux]

(12-20-2016 )Mrkentee Wrote:  What's worse? Cold start at 5 or 10 degrees, or idling for 10 hours?

Cold start, hands down. If you don't have the room or coin for an APU, a hydronic Webasto is your cold weather friend. We had one on our Volvo D12 and would set the timer 2 hours before start time.
It only burns about a .1/gph and truck started like it was a spring day, no smoke or cold start rattle. The truck had 950k on it when we sold it, passed emissions with 3% opacity on the smoke test and used 1 gl oil every 15k miles. Every tire kicker that looked at the truck was sure the engine was done despite the service records and listening to it run.

It had the Webasto on it almost it's entire life. I dropped the price $1500 and took it off when I sold it, as is where is, it was recently rebuilt and ran perfect. Webasto is about $3500 new, $1500 used.
Keeping the oil hot is key. Not burning a 1000 gl of extra fuel every year, priceless.