I don't warm up the car because it doesn't state anywhere in the manual that I need to warm the car up before I drive.

 

ill let it warm up for about 5 min and then shift below 3k till i see 3 bars

 

when i turn on my car i hear a belt/fan turn on that lets off a slight "whistle/whining" sound that eventually turns off after the first minute or so

besides that i wait for a little bar to pop up saying it's warmer

 

30 seconds is all you need...then just drive shifting under 5k until you get 3 bars. simple.

 

I think normal temperature is actually 8 bars, but 7 is the minimum for VTEC.

 

You might be right about it being 8 instead of 7 because whilst moving very slowly in heavy traffic today I counted 8. However, that could've been because I was sitting in traffic so the engine was slightly hotter. Perhaps I can't count properly.

 

I have 5 minute commute to work, so my car on the daily barely gets enough time to fully warm up. I have modifry's temp fix for my aem and with my short commute (in the colder weather) i will finally see 3 bars on the coolant temp by the time i am pulling onto my road. I will start my car, and pull out of the garage, go up the driveway and then basically coast down the hill until i get to the main road. On my commute i never floor it and barely go over 3k rpms. I tend to wait 8-10 minutes of constant driving before i start to go WOT, this includes having the coolant gauge already be at 3 bars etc..

 

I usually wait about 30 seconds before leaving the driveway. As for shutting off the engine, should you wait a little while if you were driving sprinted?

 

It probably has no benefit, but I usually drive the last couple miles rather gently, to cool things down. LOL, it's probably a habit I picked up from riding horses, 'cause it's not good to ride 'em hard and then put 'em up wet.

Seriously though, I do try to make sure that the brakes and other parts aren't super hot when I park the car, and I do that by taking it easy for a couple miles before parking. Might not be helping, but it can't hurt anything either.

 

On track we always try to do a "cool down" lap when possible. The idea with such a lap is to keep the speeds up high enough to get the airflow but low enough to do little or no braking (ie. 80mph instead of 130mph), but to keep the RPMs down a bit (ie. 6K instead of 9K).

It is not beneficial to cool the car down by driving very slowly, because you don't get enough airflow.

In the paddock I will look at the temperature gauge (I have the modifry mod). Typically it will spike up when you park, as the airflow stops cooling things. Then the fan will come on. Then the fan will go off again. At that point I usually shut the engine off, although occasionally I'll just pull in and shut off immediately.

If your "spirited driving" does not involve constant WOT and braking from 130 to 70 and 110 to 50 and 100 to 50 again and again every 10-30 seconds or so, then probably there is not much need for cooling down the car.