Of course you realize that I now have to take Mr. Tea apart (I pity the fool!)
The bottom uses square drive screws to discourage tinkers from taking the pot apart, electrocuting themselves, and suing the company.
Fortunately, I have a set of square drive bits!
Once the heating element is removed, you can see there are only a few parts inside- the heating element, a light, and some sort of a thermo-switch.
The two short pieces of rubber tube you see connect into either end of the "horseshoe" of the heater. The whole thing is one piece of aluminum with the heating element on one side, which conducts heat into the tube the liquid goes through.
Pressure from the weight of the water in the pot pushes down into the bottom of the horseshoe, where it is heated. When it gets hot, it has no place to expand to other than out the other side of the horseshoe, up a tube, and out the pot into the carafe you set next to it.
Now I have to test the heater out to see it in action without all that white plastic in the way. I loaded the heater tube with water using a kitchen baster and plugged the device into a GFI-protected outlet. (Kids, don't try this at home!)
The heater VERY quickly boiled off the water. This made lots of steam and frightened my wife. ("You might want to step back....") But once it boiled off, the thermo-switch popped and the red light turned off.
This makes me think that the switch is a temperature safety of sorts. You plug the tea pot in, and it cooks the water until it's all gone, at which point the temperature sky-rockets, causing the thermo-switch to kick out.
Does anyone know of resistive heating elements like this care what voltage is going through them? Or if it's AC or DC? I don't think it matters, but I am far from positive.
Anywho! I don't see why I can't just plumb an insulated container of coolant to run through this heater, through the heater core, and back into coolant tank. I think it could be set up so that convection moves the coolant while it heats. While running the heater in the car, I would need a pump to circulate the coolant to exchange heat to the heater core.
While just parked and running the heater, some heat should radiate out the heater core and pre-warm the cabin.
Sound workable? Your thoughts?
PS: The resistance of the heating element was 19.3 Ohms.
EDIT: YOWZA! I just thought to stick my kitchen instant read thermometer directly into the heating element. It instantly spun all the way twice around the 200 degree F. scale. It must be about 450 degrees inside the heater!