Surely many of you have heard of the Bosch start-stop system that equip many cars and that Bosch has recently renewed. This system turns off the engine of our car when we find ourselves at a red light or even in a traffic jam. When we want to continue driving, the car starts automatically.
The car does not guess when the light turns green or when we want to start the car. For the engine of our car to start, we only have to do a routine task, Depress the clutch to put first.
Thanks to the Start Stop system we reduce fuel consumption of our car and, therefore, also CO2 emissions. This system is especially useful for journeys made in the city, and can reduce fuel consumption by 8%.
Stopping our car the Start Stop system control unit performs various checks. To find out if you can turn off the engine, check that there is no gear engaged, that the ABS sensor indicates that the vehicle is stationary and also that the electronic battery sensor has enough energy to restart our vehicle. If all these conditions are met, the system automatically shuts down the engine.
As soon as we need to continue our march, we press the clutch to put first. It is at this moment when a special starter motor kicks in and quickly starts our caralmost imperceptibly. From then on, we can continue our journey.
But, if I don't have the Start Stop system in my car, can I do the task manually? power can be, but we must take a couple of things into account so as not to be surprised in the future.
If we carry out the task manually, we will also be able to save fuel. However, if our car is not adapted for the Start Stop system, we will reduce the life of our starter motor. In conventional vehicles, a starter motor can withstand around 40.000 starts, while a Start Stop system starter motor can withstand up to 250.000 starts.
Apart from this, We will also see the life of our battery decrease So, at the end of the day, the savings may not be that much if we do it manually. Everything we save on fuel, we will spend on batteries and starter motors.
These are the types of articles that I would always like to see in a virtual workshop.
This system is very interesting. They recently lent me a BMW 320d E90 that was equipped with this system and the truth is that I found it very useful, but I saw a downside, "the starter motor". With so many stops and so many times using it, I thought that what we would save in consumption, we would spend on starter motors. Until I read this article in which it says that it has a longer useful life. My question is, what is different about these starter motors with the conventional ones?
Apart from the starter motor and the battery, when the Start Stop function is carried out manually with a vehicle without this feature, the control unit (UCE) is also damaged, since it restarts every time the engine is started, heating up the circuits of the microprocessors and after a while it ends up rendering the vehicle unusable. Not all control units have the same quality and in particular this happened to my car because it has one of the simplest. It is better to take care of your health and in any case reduce consumption at idle.