Ok, before people start calling me the biggest dumbass ever...I already know it was incredibly dumb. But let me explain the situation.

It was really really late at night, and I have autostart on my car. So I was at a buddies apt, wanted to warm up the engine so i started her up while still in my buddies place 5 min before i left. Five minutes later, I get into the car and i just forgot that it was already on and by force of habit, double cranked her. Of course there was this disgusting grinding sound and I almost cried, and actually this is the second time its happened.

My question here is....is this bad and if so HOW bad?? Anybody know if theres any permanent damage caused this way? Rest assured I'm gonna try not let this happen again.

 

I don't think you've permanently damaged anything, just taken a little extra life out of the starter. I think the main thing is "STOP DOING IT!"

OT - how'd you get your car before you ordered it???

 

yeah you engaged the starter and the engine turned the starter a good bit faster then the starter would turn itself.

any damage would be to the starter not the engine. not real great, but your not hurting your performance in any way. the engine itself could care less.

 

You probably just wore down the teeth on the starter that much more. As said above, you just shortened the starter's life, but don't worry now...

 

It's not big deal. Plenty of people do this all the time. Doing it just a couple times isn't gonna hurt anything. Just like grinding gears when you miss a shift. It's not gonna hurt anything too bad if you only do it a few times, but if you do it all the time, it will start to affect things.