Fast warm up ideas: 5,500 watt, 19,000 BTU per hour coolant heater

[oil pan 4]

Alternator put is not linier. I have a 130 amp and if the idle is set too low the alt wont charge the batteries with the head lights on.
Only way to know for sure is put a DC amp clamp on it and turn everything on.

[Isaac Zackary]

Anytime a person uses an alternator or generator to heat the whole engine it'll actually be heating several times faster due to the fuel burning than due to the electrical energy. Consider, the ICE is usually less than 20% efficient. Maybe as much as 40% but not usually. All that loss of energy is heat. Even if you had a huge 60,000 watt alternator (5000 amps) hooked up to a 60,000 watt block heater and ran that you would be creating about 240,000 watts of heat in the combustion process.

[csnyder]

My kid brother lived on a small farm where he could not get the rig close to the buildings or a power source, and letting the truck idle all weekend when he was home in the winter got pretty expensive so we put in an RV water heater, run off Propane. It would pre-heat the engine and defrost the cab in a couple hours from dead cold, and keep the bunk comfy and the engine ready to start when he bunked in cold weather. We had a 24 volt circulator pump set up running off 12 volts and a couple of computer fans moving air over the added heater core in the bunk. Worked great.

[oil pan 4]

I have the coolant heater installed just not hooked up.
The stainless 5/8'' barb to 1 inch NPT came in saturday and the 3/4'' barb to 3/4" NPT should be here Monday.
Going to put a dryer cord on it for testing.
Later on I would like to hard wire it in with 10/2 UVB romex.

[oil pan 4]

It was about 85'F to 90'F going in and 109'F going out.

Its wired up on 12/3 SJ cable with a modular NEMA 10-30 plug head.
The 12 gauge wire is slightly above its limit with this amount of current. Its not going to be ran for more than 20 minutes at a time and in very cold temperature.

[Daox]

Wow, 20F temp rise through it, that is impressive. I love the idea.

[oil pan 4]

By comparison the 2400 watt heater only warmed the coolant 12'F per pass.

This one I am thinking turn the key to on (not starting the engine) that will get the electric coolant pump going, turn the heater to "defrost" and instantly start to defrost the wind shield and heat the engine some with out running the engine.

Most mornings here a 20'F to 25'F increase in coolant temperature going to the heater core should be enough to start melting frost almost instantly.

Then if its cold, and not frosty, just leave the heater off and send all the heat to the engine block

[cts_casemod]

Great idea, however the feasibility of a 5.5KW supply is at least doubtful in most places.

I have a similar setup using a 3phase heater, so heat settings can be changed as needed by turning individual (3) elements on and off. Say 2, 4 and 6KW.

The heater can be directly attached to a 1.5" NTP adapter and has a screw in type option for the electrical contact cover.



http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2719475258...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

[cts_casemod]

Originally Posted by TimV

Ive got an (80)150amps alternator. So probably putting out 80 amps at idle.

I just dont have the ability to plug in with an extension cord.

So i aim forces to use this.

You can use a Diesel heater such as the one above, with a rated output power of 5KW. I had the glow plug setup on my older diesel and found it useless at other than killing engine torque at low revs. (It only heats up faster because of how much more fuel you have to burn given the engine inefficiency, which increases cold engine wear too) The car looked pretty stiff before the turbo kicked in because of the extra load.

[Isaac Zackary]

Originally Posted by cts_casemod

I had the glow plug setup on my older diesel and found it useless at other than killing engine torque at low revs. (It only heats up faster because of how much more fuel you have to burn given the engine inefficiency, which increases cold engine wear too) The car looked pretty stiff before the turbo kicked in because of the extra load.

In my 1985 VW non-turbo diesel Golf, if the glow plugs work I can start the engine as low as 0°F (-18°C). But without them, I can't get it to start at temps as high as 50°F (10°C). The beauty of a glow plug is that it puts the heat right where you need it. So it takes less heat to do the same thing.

What you are describing sounds like an intake manifold grid heater, not a glow plug system. I've ran plenty of diesel powered vehicles with those grid heaters and they don't seem to do anything but put a strain on the electrical system and cause severe burns to your hand if you put it anywhere near the intake manifold. I think that when you turn over the engine there's not enough heat transfer to the air, so air rushes through the intake manifold and doesn't really heat up all that much. And by the time the fuel is injected into the air it's cold again and won't start.

For the record, if you wait for the thing to stop heating (I use an voltmeter and wait for it to go back up to 12V) and then try starting it it will crank over just fine. But if you try to start it while the thing is still heating it won't want to start because of the extra load. We had three high capacity batteries per Bus and with the intake grid heater on it would drop the voltage of all three batteries to around 9V or less!

With glow plugs, however, you can start the engine just fine with them on since they don't use near as much juice.