Electric WAI

[jeff88]

What about an immersion heater? You could make a custom intake pipe with a hole to fit the heating element.

This one has a screw on it. You could make a hole with threads in the pipe so it screws in without having a vacuum leak. Screw-in Immersion Heater

Don't know what you'll be able to do with the voltage issue. There is a 12V adapter version. 12V Immersion Heater

I have to agree with others. I think it would be more beneficial to do this to the coolant rather than the air intake, because the ECU runs rich until the coolant is up to temp. If you heat the air intake, it is like treating the symptom, heating the coolant is fixing the problem. Maybe you should try this with the coolant and if it works, but isn't enough, than you can pick the higher hanging fruit and heat the air intake.

I like the idea.

[RedDevil]

As I see it there are two reasons why a cold engine wastes so much fuel.

One is thick oil; added friction so to say.
The other is bad combustion. The system will feed in extra fuel until the oxygen sensor is satisfied, but that means it gets overly rich.

I know about immersion heaters just like oil coolers. They are quite useful, I do not dispute that.They solve the friction part.

Heating the air solves the other part. Air is the medium the combustion process uses. And it works; conventional WAIs are effective, just not in the first few minutes when the engine has no heat to power the WAI,

When the engine is warm the air gets warmed up a bit by the intake manifold and inside the cylinder, and the other wiay round preheated air may lose a bit of heat in a stone cold engine.
Yet, for the sole purpose of heating intake air, I think the eWAI could be more effective than a block heater etc, unless you draw the intake air from around the preheated engine parts.

Best approach would be using block heaters and eWAI combined, solving both issues.

[pgfpro]

From my back ground, tuning different engine management systems. The coolant temperature plays the biggest role when it comes to fuel enrichment.

When I do a tune on a stand alone management system the first thing I build is the fuel table. Then the ignition table. Then the fuel enrichment tables.

On cold start, the engine will struggle to stay running without cold enrichment able. On cold start you can get away with running a IAT table disable, but not the coolant enrichment table.

When comparing the two, the coolant table will always have more enrichment then a coolant table (added pulse width to the fuel table). This is because the fuel will stick to the combustion walls and cylinders until they warm up. The fuel fall out attracts the light weight fuel infractions and makes the problem even greater.

IMO if I had to weigh out the two enrichment tables I would say the coolant has around a75% enrichment to the IAT's enrichment 25%.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by JRMichler

I'm convinced that the bulk of the cold start reduction in mileage is due cold oil. That's why engines crank so much slower when it gets cold. An electric WAI would not help.

Don't some diesel engine have electric WAI? If so, find one of those in a junkyard. It's designed for under hood use.

Some of the small car guys have proven they don't get their best milage till after 20 or 30 miles of driving, well after the coolant is up to temperature, the oil takes a while to warm up.

Cummins engines use an electric grid heater for starting and to smooth out cold start roughness and reduce unburn fuel leaving the exhaust.
That is why I have intake heaters in my diesel.
I believe Cummins has stuck with the electric grid heater. Ford and GM use a heater coil in their engines for smoothing out cold start roughness last time I checked.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by pgfpro

IMO if I had to weigh out the two enrichment tables I would say the coolant has around a75% enrichment to the IAT's enrichment 25%.

Sounds like people should be building more of these:
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...mer-23893.html

It brought the 600lb diesel engine plus 2 very large turbo chargers temperature filled with 6 gallons of coolant from -2'C to 27'C in 20 minutes with our running the engine.
Just think how fast it would work on a tiny 4 cylinder engine with no liquid cooled turbos.

[jeff88]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

Best approach would be using block heaters and eWAI combined, solving both issues.

That's exactly what I was thinking. But you should do the block heater first. No point in putting hot air into a cold engine.

If you wanted to get really fancy, you could add a second battery that you plug in at night with the block heater. Then the battery can power the heater without draining on your alternator. Since you only need it a for a few minutes, the battery could be pretty small.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

The cold season is upon us, nipping any attempt to get good or even average FE in the bud at every cold start.
When it is freezing and I start my car and walk around it I can smell the unburnt fuel from the exhaust. Such a waste, but what to do?

What about electrically heating the intake air?
It needs to be electric; the exhaust manifiold is still cold too at first.

Laid my egg, now shoot

My Subaru 360 which is exhaust heated only (aircooled motor) gets heat in around 90 seconds, so I would lean toward just routing by the cat and manifold first.

Also for instant heat...
You could just preheat the gas tank to 150 degrees F (it works too but is rather dangerous, I did it carefully one time and it has MASSIVE affects in cold weather on warm up time, timing, FE and the whole 9 yards) Had a lot more power off the line as well. As a side note, most fuel systems are rated to 140-160F so you can run a car in a desert safely.

Cheers
Ryan

[RedDevil]

Preheating the gas is way less effective than preheating the air, as the air weighs so much more than the tiny fraction of fuel it burns. Unless you heat the fuel a lot, but that is both cumbersome and dangerous. I think much of the heat would get lost in the injectors btw.

Checked the revs on my car this morning. 9 degrees Celsius, 1300 RPM, just 28% load. So that would be some 5.3 Watt needed per degree rise in temperature. 150 Watt would raise it to 35 degrees Celsius! That is enough to make a difference.
It will rev a bit higher with higher load when it is freezing, but still it would have an effect.
I'll go look for some 150W heater to hook up, manually switched at first.

I feel my first ever seriously conducted ABA testing coming up

[Cobb]

Back in the v block engine days they had an extra shield over the headers and a vacuum operated valve in he ait cleaner housing that allows the engine to suck air off the headers when its cold.

From driving the gen 2, I see it loves cold humid air for better performance. For fuel economy on short trips o ten miles or so warm air does better, but thats once its up to temp like mentioned here.

When I was unemployed and making 2-3 mile trips earlier this year I got 26 mpg.

I know those say heating the air doesnt make sense, but most diesels do it and many keep the heater burning for up to a minute after the vehicle cranks. Some of the diesels even go as far as to keep the alternator off for a minute to prevent from loading up the engine too much at first.

[XYZ]

Originally Posted by jeff88

What about an immersion heater? You could make a custom intake pipe with a hole to fit the heating element.

This one has a screw on it. You could make a hole with threads in the pipe so it screws in without having a vacuum leak. Screw-in Immersion Heater

Don't know what you'll be able to do with the voltage issue. There is a 12V adapter version. 12V Immersion Heater

I have to agree with others. I think it would be more beneficial to do this to the coolant rather than the air intake, because the ECU runs rich until the coolant is up to temp. If you heat the air intake, it is like treating the symptom, heating the coolant is fixing the problem. Maybe you should try this with the coolant and if it works, but isn't enough, than you can pick the higher hanging fruit and heat the air intake.

I like the idea.

Immersion heaters are meant to be immersed - in liquid.

If you try to do this in an air intake it may melt something. That wouldn't be good...