Transmission pre-heater?
 

I wonder what would be an easy and/or effective way to do this.

Does aluminum transmit heat well? Given that most of our transmission/transaxle cases are AL, this may be an issue.

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Related to this: heating the transmission would be less of an issue if the lube was lightweight and 100% synth (its viscosity was more stable). Currently I'm running GM's semi-synth. With a weight that's similar to 5w30. Any recommendations on a fully synth, lightweight lube?

Easiest way would be to use flexible pad heaters, wire-tied around the bottom of the trans.

• The cons to this though are the fact that most trans cases are ribbed for strength and therefore would prevent optimal surface contact of the pad heater.
• The easy part (relatively speaking) would be the installation of the pads and wrap the wire around to secure it/them.

Best way would be to have a circulating style heater and physically heat/circulate the trans fluid.

• Great way to heat up an auto trans considering most of them have at least 5 quarts (some have 14 or more quarts) of fluid in them and already have lines running to a cooler in the radiator that you can tap into for the heater.
• Not so great for a manual trans though (I know that Honda transaxles only house 2.25 quarts of fluid).

So an experiment would have to be done in order to determine if heating your particular vehicle's transmission would be viable.

How much efficiency do you think you could really gain from this? Or, are we thinking of this as more of a wear and tear prevention thing?

No, it's for more of an efficiency thing. Answer: a very small amount. :)

AL is a good thermal conductor - this is why your motor controller's sink is AL :D

Yeah, I thought of that... and then wondered if its role in its original life in the peltier unit was chosen more for its dissimilarity to whatever metal made up the other half than for its conductivity.

But thanks for confirming :)

Dipstick
 

Would a dipstick-style heater work well in this application?

I going full-synth on the tranny (as soon as I can change it out). I just need a way to heat stuff up without access to a outlet -- that's my biggest draw right now: the Cold start.

RH77

Manual transaxle = no dipstick. Also the dipstick heaters I've seen are pitifully low power. Like in the range of 50-100w. Not really enough to help.

Tom: good idea for the people with external cooling lines. Unfortunately, not for the Suzukiclones.

I would think that a modified dipstick heater would be the way to go for a tranny, aluminum is a great conductor of heat (up there with copper and silver), so you are going to loose some heat heat thru the case, but it seems like you are going to loose less if you are heating the fluid directly, and the fluid is the stuff that is most affected by the cold.
I think that most dipstick heaters are 150 watts if I remember right, so small enough that a Christmas tree light timer should work.

I use this. Link>> http://www.lubegard.com/automotive/gear_fluid_supp.html

Use 3oz of "Lubegard Gear Fluid Supplement" for very Quart of "Mobile-1 Oil 0w-40"

http://www.mobiloil.com/USA-English/...l_1_0W-40.aspx