A Recycled Blog

I'm shutting down my original Rockinon blog and I am moving some of my favourite posts to this site. I'm not being lazy; I'm recycling.

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It’s a weird world when David Gough, the blogger covering environmental concerns for The London Free Press, comes out against a bylaw designed to stop the practice of idling a car for more than a minute.

Gough wrote: “Five minutes makes sense, one minute just seems to be cutting it too close.”

He goes on to argue that dropping his son off at the arena might easily force him to idle his car for more than a minute while his son putzes around undoing his seat belt, turning off his video game and getting his hockey bag from the trunk. Gough says he could see his son costing him money.

Dave, the idea is to turn off your car. It’s easy. It’s fast. It’s green. And, it’s old fashioned.

That’s right, old fashioned. When I was a boy, my father never let his car idle for more than a minute — not even in winter. He had been told by a mechanic that the manual choke made the carburetor fuel mix richer and this could cause a soot-like build-up on the plugs. This dirt, the mechanic said, caused engines to run-on when turned off.

Furthermore, the mechanic said the engine oil pump was not efficient when the car was idling. It worked best with the car underway and the engine reving higher.

Four decades ago, my father taught me: If you are stopping for more than a minute, turn off the car. If my dad could do it, we can all do it. And, my dad wasn’t even green.