[S_F]

I just put the same block heater in my DX. I had been putting off doing this all winter since I was afraid I would need to remove the exhaust manifold, which bites and entails getting a new gasket between it and the head plus one for between the manifold and the elbow before the cat. It was actually pretty easy. The plug came out easily considering I live in a climate with a winter and the car is 15 years old with 250,000 miles. All I did was remove the heat shield to get at the plug. From there I used a 3" extension with a regular socket wrench. No BFH was needed. I routed the plug out through the grill on the bottom of the bumper. I still need to zip tie it on there or something. It's nice but it isn't getting the car as warm as fast as I expected. I have only used it for 1 hour at the most and when I fired up the car the needle was only a little up from pegged at the bottom. Then this afternoon I had to go on an errand that entailed me only driving several miles. I knew that I was going to need to go out again later in the day so I plugged the block heater in as soon as I got in from the first trip thinking that the temp wouldn't drop at all. Well when I fired it up for the second trip it wasn't fully warmed up. I think I need to conduct some experiments to see how long it takes to engine to reach the maximum temp afforded by the block heater and what exactly that temp is. Also are there any danger associated with keeping it plugged in all the time?

What are you experiences in these matters TomO?

P.S. I don't want to show the heater in a bad light. It rocks. I love it. Well worth the money even if my fuel economy doesn't change one lick.