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Old 06-18-2009, 03:10 AM   #2 (permalink)
LeanBurninating
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Join Date: May 2009
Location: Bay Area, CA
Posts: 131

Honduh Power - '98 Honda Civic HX
90 day: 44.37 mpg (US)
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88 views and no responses? Hmm... maybe you people are starting to pick up on how many projects I like to talk about vs how many I actually go through with and get done.

Well I really should be getting this done very soon.

I had some good convo with the diesel guys today. I thought this header grid ran continuously, but in reality its only on start up, and on a big truck with two full size batteries it sucks out enough current to make it harder to start and dim the lights and everything. Apparently those batteries will drop from 12v to 9v when that heater grid lights. So for me and my one little battery this would not work well.

As an alternative, one guy suggested I use an $8 glow plug, since its cheap, its simple to hook up and integrate, and it makes lots of heat. Only drawback is that if it runs long enough, I've been told that it will get hot enough to melt itself after about 12 minutes.

I really like this idea because it allows me to run a (theoretically) very effective warm air intake, and also toggle it off for a regular intake. Ideally I would like to have two functions:
1) some heavy duty heating power, like one or two of these glow plugs that I can turn on for cold starting that will heat up to 1500 deg. F for the aforementioned ~12 mins, this working to get the car into closed loop faster, and then in addition to these I would like
2) some type of glow plug / heating device that I can run continuously while I drive. I thought about maybe making a hot coolant line wrap around the intake pipe, but I'd rather have something electronic that I can click on and off. Plus toggle switches are where its at. yo.

Some kind of continuous heating device... a glow plug that wont melt itself that I can run non stop. Warm enough to make a difference, but not hot enough to start melting stuff lol. Any takers??????

Keep in mind that whatever I use will be mounted into a steel exhaust pipe, so it will be heating the air passing by inside the pipe, but also heating up the pipe itself, then heat soaking the air even further.



I need your brain powa!!!!

Thanks for reading.
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