Manual Stop/Start at the lights and junctions

[fazersharp]

For many years I've heard that most (80%) of the wear and damage in an engine occurs during start-up and shit down.

On shut-down, the very thin oil film over bearing surfaces etc stops being "circulated" and sits there between 2 extremely hot metal surfaces which don't have fresh oil replacing that in place, to cool them - it carbonises and loses it lubricating properties and leaves a deposit on the bearing surface that is not a lubricant.

On start-up, bearings and other engine surfaces, run with less than optimal oil coverage/oil pressure and so additional wear occurs.

I'm sure that hasn't changed, but maybe the make-up of oils has changed so that it's no longer the issue it used to be, but being an old Luddite, all I can see these stop-start systems systems doing is causing extra wear/damage to the engine.

I'm sure the only reason they were developed was so that car engines would automatically shut off during the laboratory testing process to determine the emissions levels for compliance reporting and vehicle approval  (basically it was a "cheat" just like the VW cheat, but only adopted by every manufacturer), with no real-world benefit or relevance. But now that it's been adopted though, it can't be dropped unless the testing process is changed, otherwise all the cars would fail to comply in the "lab-based testing" !!

Exactly my thoughts too. I discounted some cars a couple of years ago because they had start stop, when I asked about a button to turn it off most car sales men could not tell me, one said "yes there is a button" but could not find one and then realised that the car did not have start stop in the first place ( I bought that car)