Quote:
Originally Posted by MetroMPG
Relatively easy installation (it's a cartridge style heater):
1.5 L Toyota block heater
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Given that you're in Michigan, how is the car for rust?
I've seen a few gen 2 Priuses that were rusty enough that they were scrapped.
Usually the first signs of tinworm on this car is the area of the rocker panel just ahead of the rear wheel. |
Only real rust on the car is the driver's door bottom edge, the front side track seal for the window is gone, so I guess it's been gone a long time since it's the only door showing rust stains on the rockers.
The 2009 I have has the rocker panel rust in front of the rear tires if I remember right, it's mainly cosmetic though and the car is silver so a bit harder to notice (white shows rust real easily).
I normally drive vehicles from the 90's so a little rust isn't a problem as long as the suspension section of the car is solid. I drove my 97 corolla until the gas tank straps failed from the body rust, could be fixed and drove more but 305k miles and it needs basically all maintenance items done and front end suspension work. I miss the car, drove it everywhere including in the woods on state land lol.
Never heard of the tinworm term, here we call it cancer, or Michigan cancer since this state is known for using the worst salts that causes the most rust. In recent years they've cut back a lot on the salt, barely the center of the road gets cleared, problem is they only plow once wait a day or longer and they might hit it with a little more salt but the 2nd run they don't put the plow down even if there's a fair bit of slush build up, would be more effective to plow the slush away, but that's a whole rant waiting to happen lol. I wish they'd use dirt when the temps are more mild since it's effective for melting the snow and also providing traction.
For the block heater, I don't really have access to a power outlet outside, I can't plug in my diesel too easily unless I run an extension cord out the door, then I'm loosing heat in the house and making the home heating system less efficient. I'd like to build a garage/shop some day so maybe the location of it and such can be situated so it's in a good location to be close enough to the house for plugging in the car or truck.
I'm thinking a 12v based system since it seems like the computer avoids charging the battery while the engine is cold, so I'm thinking it should be an increase in mpg. Problem is, 800w of heat might take 30 mins or so to warm things up, but I'm looking at around a 10 min round trip, and the engine coolant comes up to temp in about the first 5 mins. With the extra electric heat it might shave off around 1 min for the warmup time.
Here's a pic of one, I guess this one only does like 300w though with lower amp glow plugs.
https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthre...tml#post510043
I've seen a thread talking about this and the concept of using a diesel glow plug directly in contact with the coolant was mentioned. The powerstroke diesel glow plugs are pretty cheap, like $11 each for the OEM ones and they draw around 280-300w based on my math. 2-3 of those wired to a thermostat based controller would give around 600-900w of heat to the engine coolant. That should be around 75 amps at 12v, fairly sizable draw. I'd probably target a single one at first for testing if/when I get time to mess with it. Longevity of the glow plug is the only thing I'd be concerned with, but if the coolant is always flowing when it's on, it shouldn't be a problem. I'm pretty sure I have my old used glow plugs from when I replaced them in my diesel, there were like 3 that still worked well, I just replaced them all since clearly it's been a long time since the engine had them replaced (if ever). It was getting real hard starting below 20F lol.
Looks like there are similar glow plug based heaters that are actually sold/pre-made.
https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthre...tml#post510043
Quote:
Originally Posted by hayden55
If you are feeling frisky the gen 3 Prius has an exhaust heat recovery system. You could probably get it from a junkyard for next to nothing.
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Yea I saw them, they are tiny though. Concept I have in my head, is a copper pipe run around the exhaust (have to test how much wrapping is safe) and add the extra cooling load to the cooling system, or use an EGR Cooler which is basically the same thing as the 3rd gen prius system but like 3x larger. Maybe it would extract too much heat from the exhaust, but at the same time, heating the coolant up faster should help a lot.
Here's the prius one for $185:
And here's the one for a 6.4L Ford diesel that's $45
Looks like the ford one is about 2-2.5 times longer than the prius one. Worst case, my dad's wanting to learn to tig weld with his new welder, he could try to cut it in half and add a tank and flange to each end to convert it into 2 units. I technically have 2 cars, and the other one has no cats at all, no pipe or anything so it's nice and loud lol.
Of course this setup is slightly counter productive since it increases the coolant capacity a little, but the extra heat in the system sounds to be a net gain overall as long as the cooling system can keep up.