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Old 11-23-2009, 06:00 PM   #7 (permalink)
The Atomic Ass
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Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Mason, OH
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Overland - '24 Nissan Versa S 5MT
90 day: 37.88 mpg (US)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tinkerbill View Post
AA,
With that short 3 mile commute producing condensation, what about setting up a small block heater? I know that probably most of the ones you can buy are probably too big but perhaps you could fabricate something using a cup heater or maybe a soldiering iron or other low-wattage source. It might be that just using one of those external magnet-type heaters could work underneath. This application could accomplish two things, cut down on condensation and get better mileage due to starting out with a warm engine.
tinkerbill
Interesting thought, only issues I see are plugging in at work, and that engine wrap to keep the wind off the engine... The latter I've been too lazy to do, the former I will check on tonight when I go to work, see if there is a plug outside.

Now the question is, will ~40W, (the output of a soldering iron I can recycle for the purpose), be too much, or too little, and what might be a good conductive paste for such a purpose? I'd think the gunk they use for mounting cooling blocks to processors, but I don't know if the stuff would be too expensive or not.
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