[paulgato]

Good point Frank. It's pretty damp and salty around here too. I'm currently sorting out some rust on the underbody because I am planning on keeping this car for as long as possible. Encouragingly, the only rust I've found so far has been where accidental damage has taken place, such as previous owners dropping the sills on kerbs or jacking up on the wrong places. Elsewhere, it all looks 100% rust free, which is not bad after 11 years on Britain's salty roads. I also took off one of the front wheel arch plastic liners and found half a kilo dry weight (more than a pound) of compacted mud filling the lower rear section of the wheel arch. It was full to a depth of about six inches. That mud will have been almost constantly damp and soaked with road salt for years. No rust whatsoever underneath.

And I'm not having to start at -30 degrees C, so engine wear is probably not a huge issue, as you say. Still, eliminating any possible wear from cold starts is a kind of 'free benefit' of doing this mod and it cheers me up to count the benefits!

The mpg benefit of starting the day with an already-warm engine is my main motivation for fitting the pre-heater. In the summer, the car's mpg meter will show about 70mpg on my five mile run into town, and on the way back it will show about 90mpg (imperial) even if the car has been sitting an hour or two in between. (In the winter I would expect this difference to be even greater.) With an already warm engine it should be showing close to 90mpg both ways. (The car's mpg meter is about 7% optimistic, but consistently so.)