Warming the coolant with exhaust?
 

I am thinking about building a "coolant warmer" to warm up the engine more quickly. My idea is to transfer heat from the exhaust header to the coolant until the engine warms up. One way I thought of to do this is to wrap copper pipe around the tubes on the exhaust header and run coolant through it. I would install a valve so I could allow or block coolant flow for winter or summer. Warming the engine up quicker could only help its efficiency and longevity. What do you think about this idea?

You should probably have a bypass for the exhaust after warm up instead of blocking off coolant I could see the left over coolant cooking in the pipes and sludging up the tube

Not only cooking, but it would turn into a bomb as it passes the boiling point of the coolant and pressure builds. There are a few threads on this though. If you do some searching there are several ideas on how to do it.

In fact, I just added this mod to the 65+ mods list:

http://ecomodder.com/forum/fuel-econ...cations.php#69

There are a couple links there, but there are more threads on this topic too.

Cool! I don't see how it would turn into a bomb though because the radiator cap won't allow more than ~16 PSI of pressure to build up in the cooling system. Also, when did you add it to the 65+ mods list? I looked at the list this morning and I swore I didn't see it this morning!

Haha, I just did it this afternoon. I'm going to be adding a bunch of the warm up mods from my the fast warm up compilation thread. I've just been trying to gather some links to threads.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ead-35830.html

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ger-29085.html

All you need to do is control exhaust flow.
You can't just shut off coolant flow when you don't want any more hot coolant.

I thought i had posted the video link here before.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nNendiDFzSM
Vw are already doing this, they have a water cooled exhaust manifold.

You could maybe repurpose an egr valve to blow on the radiator or oil pan?

The first-gen Insight has a water-cooled exhaust manifold too. It's cooled full-time, and the car just runs the same radiator as 4-cylinder cars do (it's a 3) to make up for the added heat.

Yup, that's the video that gave me the idea. As for repurposing the EGR to blow on the radiator or oil pan, you would create a huge exhaust leak that would effect 02 sensor readings, and also cover it with soot. I don't think that the EGR valve is open when the engine is cold anyway. It is only open under certain conditions, like a light load cruise.

If the thermostat shuts coolant flow thru the engine off until it's hot, how do you gain efficiency? Asking for a friend...

I do like the EGR valve idea, maybe you could copy DOAX idea and heat the oil pan and trans ?