good/best engine block heater?
 

winters fast approaching in new england soooo i'm looking to invest in a engine block heater. alas, i have no knowledge of good/bad brands, appropriate wattage, etc etc. any and all recommendations and comments are welcome!

I always thought a oil pan heater to be a better heater now that fuel injection dominates cars. It would be an easier mod for you to do to and they generally use less electricity.

I'd say the best heater is the one that raises the engine temp the highest over ambient. That probably means one in the cooling system.

EDIT: seen this? http://metrompg.com/posts/block-heater.htm

Our company trucks all have the BLUEHEAT sytem. It warms the engine and defrosts the windshield without running the engine. Very nice!

BlueHeat® Main

It's expensive ($1800 installed) and it does use a little gasoline to create the heat.

I install these at my work, they are sweet, but as mentioned very pricey.

Here is the one I used, I am very pleased with it. Block heater

I highly recommend reading MetroMpg's documentation of his testing, that guy does his homework. Always has great info.

Temro Zerostart is a good brand as well, used by a lot of OEM's, and fleet companies.

Has anyone seen a heater that replaces the oil pan's drain screw?

I've seen the oil drain plug type heater... not on a car though. Some airplanes have them and generally speaking they are too small to heat up the oil very much. Heating pads JB welded to the pan are much better. They heat up the whole engine to 100F+ in a few hours. But that is in an inclosed hangar with an engine cowling that does not let much air out. I think a coolant heater would be a better choice. A coolant heater will warm the inside of the car too.

I recently installed a 550W coolant heater, but thought that a 100-150W heater for the oil would also be a good supplement.

I have a Zerostart coolant heater. I don't think anyone who drives a TDI uses anything else.

When we lived in western AK (arctic climate) an oil pan heater (jb or high temp silicone) was sufficient to keep oil in a very liquid state without blankets and what not and we were seeing -20* temps. Ideally I like a oil pan heater (glue on type), coolant heater (with a pump is best) a battery blanket or trickle charger, and cabin heater.

Oil pan heater
pro oil is very liquid which means that it will lubricate quickly
con does not warm the rest of the engine much

coolant heater
pro heater core is warm fast, the engine is warm for effecient opperation
con oil may not be heated very well and still thick

Battery blanket or trickle charger keeps the battery topped off in the very cold

Cabin heater is a luxury, but it is nice to have a warmish car to get into.

So who sez you can't have both the coolant heater and the oil pan heater? ;)

Would making my own drain plug heater be an option? Find a 100-150W heating element (anything special about it if it's going to be sitting in oil?), find a spare drain plug, drill a hole in it, put the heating element through the hole and weld it nice and snug. Anything else?

That's my plan: Add a 100-150W oil heater the 550W coolant heater I recently installed.

I looked around for heaters, but the only ones in the 100-200W range are for aquariums. They are inside a long glass tube, but I doubt they will be alright inside the oil pan. I think this idea will have to go on hold...

There is the type that replaces the oil dipstick.

Coolant or oil pan heater?
 

[EDIT: disregard... a thread already exists on almost this exact question. Ugh. Here is the link to a thread on this: http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...tml#post269415]

Which do you use? Which do you think is better? I'm considering this for my car: Model 9.1 125 Watt - 120 Volt - 1.0 Amp. My coolant and IAT temps were 48* this morning. I know that sounds like Spring to you Northerners (BTW, I grew up in the cold). But it's fairly cold here, and it weakens FE and comfort.

Would love to hear your opinions and experiences.

Bump. I'm looking at this Titan oil pan heater as well as a similar one from Wolverine. Need to get back to work, though. Titan claims (here) that its 125 watts will raise the oil to operating temps of a small motor like my 1.6L Honda in 5 hours. It seems like a good deal. Opinions?

A block heater is the way to go.
The problem is the oil hangs low and is away from the rest of the mass of the engine block. If you heat just the oil and not the block the oil will turn back into honey as soon as it get pumped into the cold block.
When I built my diesel engine I installed two 650w block heaters.
Next gas engine I build will get a block heater from now on too.

125 watts isnt much. Its better than nothing.

Ripping out a freeze plug and putting in a block heater would be the best way to go.

http://www.amazon.com/Kats-24150-Wat...0811749&sr=8-2

That one is a lot cheaper

Whether you should get a block heater or a heating pad depends on what your aim is. A heating pad on the oil pan will heat only the oil (the heat that is transfered to the rest of the engine is very small), and that heat will be instantly soaked up by the rest of the cold engine when it starts. This of course doesn't mean that a heating pad alone is bad - any amount of heat that you put into the engine prior to startup is good - and a pad is easier to install.

On the other hand, a coolant heater (installed either on the coolant line, or directly in the block) will transfer heat to the most of the engine. This means that it might not go into rich mode when starting, saving fuel, not to mention the cleaner emissions. In my diesel the warm coolant also keeps the glow plugs from turning on, reducing battery drain in cold weather.

Of course, a coolant heater doesn't heat the oil down in the pan, so right after starting you may notice a temporary dip in engine temperature. The best solution is to heat both the oil and the coolant/block. I have a 550W DEFA coolant heater and a 125W Wolverine pad under the oil pan and am very happy with how they work together:D

The bottom line is: If possible install both, if not go for the block heater and thinner oil, but a lone pad heater is still better than nothing.

Calix and Defa are the most popular in Scandinavia. Don't know if they are available in the US or 120V versions. Anyway, those guys have done quite much research about car heating.

I have 550W Defa-systems in my Citroens and 500W Calix in Saab.

Basically all heaters here are engine block heaters, ie. water heaters. Oil heaters were mainly used in air-cooled Volkswagens.

good/best engine block heater?


KAT stick on pads, or similar = good
KIM HOTSTART = best (coolant thermosiphon).

No reason not to combine them; but some electrical knowledge about amp draw, etc, will be needed.

Search around on vehicle enthusiast forums, especially where trucks are used by utilities, mines, etc; a fleet mix of gas and diesel engines.

WEBASTO or ESPAR = full independence from utilities

.

And the links:
Calix AB
DEFA WarmUp - Start page

As Piwoslaw mentioned, heating the oil is not efficient. You need to get greatest mass, the engine block itself, warm to reduce the time which engine runs on rich mixture.

For winter I just use synthetic 5W-40 or 0W-30 oil regarding of manufacturers specs. That's thin enough even in -40 Celsius

I think an important thing to remember is that preheating actually helps the efficiency in 2 different ways.

First, is the fact that the warm engine is more efficient because there's less heat transfer.

Second, a warm engine will have much lower friction, especially upon startup.

A block heater addresses primarily the 1st issue, an oil pan heater primarily the 2nd (obviously there's some crossover too). Immediately upon startup, there is relatively little oil between all the friction surfaces, therefore high friction. The colder the oil is, the thicker the oil is and the longer it's going to take for all the oil to get where it needs to be. Also, cold oil takes more energy to shear so friction will be higher due to that as well.

This is why engines that are used for long trips last longer than ones used for only short trips--frequent cold starts increase the overall wear greatly. Something to consider is that pre-heating (particularly the oil) can help reduce engine wear in addition to helping your FE.

Or, as the best option, do both. Maybe a 125 watt on the oil pan, and a 500 watt block heater, for example.

Thing to remember is also the total efficiency. Will the preheating cost more in electricity than gasoline saved? Or will Webasto or Espar (Eberspächer in the EU ;) ) burn more fuel than it saves?

i have a block heater on my Escape but i ordered a oil pan heater for my Civic so i will see which works best.

I belive that the oil pan heater will actualy heat the whole engine but the coolant will not be at warm as with a block heater. As long as the oil pan heater warms up the engine a little i'm happy with that because the oil will be warm where with a block heater only the coolant is warmed up.

The fuel savings may not ever be as great as the increased engine life, or, mean time between overhauls.

We can all come up with scenarios of vehicle type and use, etc, where one factor will sway a decision. But assuming folks are buying the right vehicle and trying to keep it the maximum number of years/miles (maybe 20 years and/or 250k miles) then prudent use of pre-heating seems a no-brainer to reduce start-up wear.

Same for a winter front on a diesel. One need not live in a cold climate to conduct some simple experiments on a vehicle kept two decades to figure best use of energy.

I thought the same, but the jury's still out on the CARDIS. I ran an experiment in early Fall using a 300W magnetic oil pan heater (Kat's Magnum). It definitely did the trick for the oil but didn't seem to have much effect on the engine block or coolant temperatures:

"Block" ("B") is the external block temperature measured with a thermocouple under a snugged bolt head near the top of the engine. "Coolant" ("C") is the temperature reported by my Ultragauge; I haven't yet looked into where that sensor lives. Because of the offset between the ambient temperature and the other readings, the last two columns are adjusted to remove the offset. (I didn't concern myself over where the offset originated as the relative values were the ones of interest.)

I literally ran this test for 24 hours, to give the oil pan heater every opportunity to show its stuff. As you can see, the heater apparently didn't do much in the way of raising engine temperatures (though it DID seem to hold onto some gains as the ambient temperature dropped overnight).

I want to do another more controlled test once the weather's significantly colder, but my current impression -- for the heater I used, where I put it, on my car -- is that I'd need a block or coolant heater if I want to warm more than the oil.

(Also still pending are actual operational tests... e.g., looking for a difference in warmup profiles with and without the oil pan heater in roughly equivalent temperatures. I'm thinking whatever heat is in the oil will be transferred to the block once the engine's started, but I question if it will make a significant or even detectable difference.)

Comments invited.

Rick

Your heater is thermostatically controlled, do you know the on/off temps? If the relatively low mass of the oil & pan heat up, maybe it's cycling and will never heat the coolant any more than that +10-15 degrees your test showed.

If you can get the same heater stuck to the block it might stay on longer and might show a bigger change.

The setpoint is 238F.

Exactly. And there's the thermal loss from the block to ambient to consider as well.

Aluminum block. :D

Not to mention it being a tiny, tightly packed engine with not much in the way of large flat unallocated surfaces. I think an actual block or coolant heater will be the way to go for that (for the CARDIS, at least).

Cheers,
Rick

MIght want to fit an engine blanket too; some DIY. I remember reading years ago that these were popular in post-war Japan. Not much money around, and a car of any sort was a luxury. Thus the effort to keep it like-new as long as possible.

Or, a Powerblanket

At the moment (the weather is getting colder) I am thinking about pre-heating the engine too. But all this block heater / oil pan heater stuff is rather expensive for the lo-tech it really is, in my opinion.

I am thinking along the line of setting up a hot air blower in front of my lower grill. Since the engine compartment is higly encapsulated (belly pan under the engine), the warm air should flow up (as warm air does) through the whole engine compartment before flowing out around the exhaust line to the back of the vehicle. The blower has a 2 KW setting and should kick up quite some heat; I may try 1/2 an hour of pre-heating first and evaluate the result.

Has anybody done this? Thoughts?

so long,

tinduck

I bought my 2 150 Watt oil pan heating pads on Amazon for $26 apiece (including shipping). That's pretty cheap IMO.

what you should do is get a oil heater and a coolant heater, hard wire the two together then put a 120v switch in your car and hard wire a trickle charger after the switch so then you plug in the car the trickle charger maintains the batteries and when you wake up to go to work you flip the 120v switch to run the heaters for 15 to 20 minutes.(if you run a 550 watt coolant heater and 2 150 watt oil heaters for 18 hours at night where i live thats 41 dollars or more a month not worth keeping the heaters plugged in all night if you ask me)

These pre-heaters are only used in very cold climates when an engine gives such problems starting it in winter I mean the engine won't even turn over, it is that cold.

How do I know, I spent a couple of years in the Rocky Mountains, I won't quite laugh off the New England winter but I can almost guarantee it isn't that cold.
I never plugged mine in unless temperatures fell into the single digits or below.
Windchill doesn't count, straight up single digit Fahrenheit.

The short of it being, you probably don't need an engine block heater, unless...
With a good, fully charged battery, the engine fails to even crank, maybe then.

Because $80 cost of hardware aside I know you will pay more in electricity to pre-heat the engine than fuel it will save, we're talking about spreading warmth in a badly insulated environment that is full of air leaks, the slightest breeze goes right through that engine bay, you couldn't keep it warm unless you dropped a flame thrower under the hood.
Do NOT wrap the engine in a blanket!!!
That is a fire hazard, and the reason I mention it is because I had thought of doing it.

For that reason, for a pre-heater to be effective it needs to stay plugged in overnight, these heaters don't take a completely cold engine and warm it up, there simply isn't enough power in them, not even the most powerful ones (which burn, as one might imply, a certain amount of kilowatt / hour).

The way these things operate is ....
As SOON as the car is parked and the engine is off, you plug it in and leave it plugged in overnight and hope it keeps some kind of meek temperature in the oil.
The engine will still be cold in the morning, one hopes it's not quite as cold.
Oh, we're looking at running a tiny space heater outside in the parking lot for 8-12 hours.

Best kind to get, unless you want to spend hours installing one and since heat rises is a magnetic kind that you can pop onto the bottom of the oil pan, for a more permanent installation you can usually attach it to one or two oil pan bolts with a bracket.
Then run the electric wire through the grill and attach it there some kind of way with a cable tie or tie it up in a loose knot, make sure the electric cable isn't in the way of any moving parts such as fans or pulleys.
Or if you don't bolt it on just pull it off in the morning, might want to wear gloves, the mating surface still does get quite hot.

You may not think so, but doing it any other way is a complete waste of time.

I remember single digit (straight-up, no windchill) days in Massachusetts. On those days, ice and snow all around, my 1970 Forest Green 327 Nova would not start without help. I had similar experiences with my 1974 Olds Delta 88 in Jersey.

My purpose in reviving this old thread is for a different reason to apply the heaters. In mildly cold conditions how can they be used to increase efficiency. (I have seen MertoMPG wonderful tests, but he did not test fuel efficiency.) The grid is cheaper than gas, but I wonder if my savings in gas would justify the amount of electricity in mildly cold conditions. Maybe I can run a test with my undergrad students in January. Maybe with and without an oil-pan heater.

Seems the circulation tank design might warm the block better than the oil pan kind and be easier to install than the freeze plug type. But the 750watt ZeroStart circulation tank heater seems quite powerful for my little 1.6L. And I have not found a lower-power circulation-style heater yet. The Kat and the Wolverine units that I found were higher power. Anyone know others that I might be missing? I have seen the kind that fit inline on the lower radiator hose, but Amazon says they are not compatible with my 98 Honda, regardless of the radiator hose size I select.

Any further thoughts?

IMO, the tank style heater is the best choice. It uses more power, but it also heats quicker and hotter than other types, so you don't need it on as long. I think the cost/degree temp. rise would be about the same, maybe less. I read on another thread that a member with a Prius can bring his car to full operating temp with a 1000watt tank heater in about an hour. The catch is you need to plumb it into a block drain for it to be most efficient. Using the heater hoses may work on some vehicles, but not well at all on others. That's why I don't have one, I have no block drain on my car.
Overall efficiency will depend on your setup and energy cost in your local area. I did some quick testing last spring (need to do more maybe) , but, it seemed to me that there was no visible overall cost savings in plugging my car in above around 40-50F. That was just my car, though, others may have better results. Also, I have no way to quantify the cost of wear caused by short tripping a cold engine.

Someone has proposed this (I can't find the thread), but it's not the best idea. Heating the air to heat the engine is less efficient than getting the job done directly, mainly because a good portion of that warm air will be lost through holes and drafts in the engine bay. Also, the amount of heat that the engine can absorb is limited by its surface area, so you'd have to keep it in warm air for a long time before it soaked up any heat. You'd spend alot of energy heating everything inside the engine bay, instead of focusing only on what really needs to be warmed up.

A cheap alternative may be one of those infrared bulbs, aimed straight at the engine block.
http://www.purenature24.com/bilder/m...2-150-watt.jpg
But if your engine is all bundled up with accessories into a neat, compact package (like mine:rolleyes:), then you may not have direct access to the block itself. But the oilpan should be clear, though.

I think it was me, and you talked me out of it.;)

Mhhh.

Maybe you are right, but in THEORY the warm-air-blower-through-the-lower-grill has some advantages over oil pan or cooling water heaters:

- behind the grill is the water cooler => gets heated. Heat transfer should be great, after all this is an air-water heat exchanger.

- the engine bay is reasonably encapsulated, so the warm air has some time to heat things up before escaping.

- not only the cooling water and the motor block get warmer, also things like transmission and other add-ons will be pre-warmed a little, which helps reduce friction.

Heat transfer IS a question since air is not a good heat carrier. On the other hand, an engine compartment at 0°C or lower provides a steep gradient for air at 40-50°C, so a decent heat flow should be achieved. After all, we are not talking about a blazing hot engine when departing, just about prewarming everything a bit.

I will give this a try since it will surely not make things worse. If it is of no use, I can still let it be :-)

so long,

tinduck