[Piwoslaw]

The oil pan heating pad from our group buy came yesterday Today I was able get some time on my brother-in-law's canal. I installed per instructions and it hasn't fallen off yet, but I won't be driving (so no preheating) until the weekend. Here are the main installation steps:

1. Find your oil pan. Find a flat spot, large enough for the heating pad.
   
   
2. Grind/sand the paint from the surface, then clean the area. Acetone/detergent are OK, gasoline/solvents are not.
   
   
3. Remove the protective cover from the pad's sticky side, but do not touch the adhesive. Plug the heater in for 3-5 seconds. (But not more, the pad gets very hot, very fast! Ask me how I found out) Carefully place the pad on the oil pan, starting from the edge opposite the power cord, apply maximum pressure as you smooth it along until the edge with the cord is set. Avoid creases, wrinkles and air pockets. The supplied squeegee is quite helpful. Plug the heater in for 10 seconds, unplug, and smooth again. Repeat once more.
   
   
4. Weatherproof the whole perimeter with the supplied high temperature silicone. (Thank you for not commenting on my artistic talent)
   
   

Before refitting the engine cover I plugged it in for 2-3 minutes. It still gets hot when mated to the oil pan, but not too hot. It crossed my mind to put insulation over the pad to increase its efficiency, but this may cause temperatures high enough to damage it and/or the oil pan. Plus the oil pan still needs to be able to lose some heat when the engine gets hot. Anyway, even if half the energy from the pad is just going to the air in the engine bay, then that air will warm other parts of the engine, as long as I don't keep the hood (bonnet) wide open.

I'll be monitoring warm-up times and comparing them to when I had only the coolant heater. No more cold oil hitting prewarmed engine parts, yeah!