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Old 12-28-2012, 01:30 PM   #40 (permalink)
Ecky
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Quote:
Originally Posted by infinite-foamies View Post
not 4x4, running rotella 5w-40. what would be a capacity for towing with an electric fan/eletric water pump? for my daily driving i dont drive long enough for the block to even get warm. havent tried the block heater yet, would preheating the block help?
Too many factors for us to guess the capacity you need but remember that the cooling systems are typically very overbuilt - they plan for you to be towing the max load in the middle of death valley up a mountain. Basjoos, owner of "aerocivic", found that in his tiny car, the area needed to cool his car was something crazy like 2"x2". It's probably not quite a valid comparison, but if you need to burn ~9x as much fuel (10mpg vs 90mpg) while towing, I'd expect cooling area won't need to be too much more than 9x as large, which is still pretty small.

I have no idea if old diesels need to be warm in the same way modern gas engines do, but on my car I can see as much as a 50% improvement driving the same route and speed between a cold and a warm engine. In part, the computer is running a rich mix before warmup but I'm sure there are other factors that might be applicable to you.
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