[Laneco]

When I worked for the State of Oregon, the remote scale stations are run from the inside of a vehicle - a running vehicle. So you would drive out, park, setup, work for 6 hours, break down and drive back. The cars idled for 6 hours at a time with zero issues. Never once, in all those years, with all the different cars we had, was there an overheating problem or any other problem for that matter.

There was a fellow here in town who had a customer bring a 944 into his shop on a Friday afternoon. The car had a problem with starting - not running just starting. The shop kid who parked it left the engine running so move cars around and forgot the poor thing. It ran until it ran out of gas, then died. They figured it probably ran for about two days straight at an idle. The car still runs fine, some ten years later.

Now that said - let me share th dark side. We had a manager who let the vehicle run while his wife was shopping (and he was snoozing nicely). About two hours passed. When they started to drive, they could smell something burning. The cats had gotten hot enough to catch something on fire in the engine bay. The vehicle burned to the ground. It was a 2011 Chevrolet Traverse - not a cheap vehicle. I hired a fire investigator who concluded the cats had overheated, but could not conclude what item in the engine bay specifically had caught fire - though obviously the fuel system was afire... $30,000 down the drain. Absolutely nothing covered by warranty.

So a few minutes, even 30 minutes while you're sitting in the car with the baby - probably never a problem. The longer it sits, the more risk you run, particularly if the cats are crowded into a narrow place (as with most FWD cars). The cats cool by air movement. When you're stationary, there is none.

angela