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Cold start blues, again.
So it's winter again. My pet peeve about owning a car with an internal combustion engine is that every time I go to start it, the engine is cold. Now I'm missing my Nissan Leaf with it's cabin preheat system.
There are a few things that can be done to and ICE car, but overall nothing seems to be a perfect solution. And now that I'm driving a new car, a 2013 Toyota Avalon Hybrid, I'm tasked with figuring out what I'm going to do to heat the engine.
Right now I have a stock block heater I installed. But the thing only outputs like 200W. I read these only keep the engine about 20°F warmer than ambient. Right now it's about 10°F outside. That means the engine is like 30°F plugged in. I wonder what it'll do when it's -40°F. So I guess my first line of priority is a better block heater. Perhaps a 1,000W or 1,500W circulating tank heater. But of course I got to figure out what water goes where and how to plumb it in.
But on the other hand only when I'm home can I be sure I'll be able to plug in my car. I just got off work with no place to plug in there. I don't have a long drive from this last place I work at and I hate warming up the engine before driving. So I had to drive home in a cold car. By the time I got home the temp gauge had only reached the C. In other words the engine never got warm, the gauge had only moved like 1/16 of an inch by the time I shut off the car. I have a few drives a day like this where the car sits for a few hours, then I have to move the car only a mile or two. Ironically, when I do my 70 mile one way commute I start at my house where I can plug in. But on my short drives during the middle of the night and early morning (janitorial work), where I would benefit most from a pre-heated engine, is where I don't have any place to plug in.
So should I just start the car and idle it anyway to warm it up like three or four times a night? I really would hate to do that! But I hate not driving far enough to get the engine warm either. Plus there's the problem of frost on and inside the windshield not wanting to cooperate.
Another thing I can do is block the radiator. But on my 70 mile drive I have to climb some 6,000ftduring the day. So the question is if I'm going to risk overheating.
The idea of a Thermos system, like on the gen 2 Prius, keeps intriguing me. Maybe I should do something like that.
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