in a recent post, the discussion of leaving the engine idling came up in the comments. i always would kill the engine when turning in jobs or servicing, it seemed logical to not waste gas.

well well well, i took my dh4 into the service bay on realistic difficulty and every time you start it, it eats about 0.8 units of the mechanical powertrain, which comes out to just about $300 for every startup.

on the other hand, it uses about six dollars of diesel every minute, so it would eat through $300 idling in about fifty minutes. it obviously also consumes oil and powertrain so, i figure unless it’s gonna be sitting more than a half hour or so, it is definitely better to leave the engine running.

ymmv with other engines. dh4 on realistic. just wanted to see for myself and these were the results.