coolant heater
 

This is the tank style heater that goes inline between the water pump and heater core. It uses convective circulation.

Very tempting. If I had the luxury of parking my car in a garage I would buy one.

I am not going to risk just any old metal container connected to a cooling system that is designed for extreemly pure coolant and alloys in the engine that don't tolerate contamination from dissimular metals.

Kick: I don't park in a garage. That's what extension cords are for ;)

JanGeo: Looks to me like an ABS plastic tank. The heating element may be the only metal in there. (And I'm sure Toyota doesn't specify a specific type of metal for the elements for its frost-plug style block heaters). I'd be more concerned about never changing my oil. Ahem.

Anyone else get one? 2 sold - they went for $10 + shipping.

Ha ha ha ha yeah well the coolant is LIFETIME in the Scion and they sell it premixed 50/50 so no one puts tap water into the block. And I am sure they have freeze plugs make of the same aluminum alloy as the block so they don't expand at different rates and come loose if they even have freeze plugs. I don't know if they have block heaters for the Scion - may have to ask the guy in Alaska what he does for his xB.

ABS Plastic tank huh - hummm that could work I guess. Heating element would probably be a stainless steel tube.

As far as the oil goes I don't have "OIL" in the engine I have "LUBE" as it does NOT contain oil. But it is working great and still as black as the day I put it in with no trace of any sludge in the filler cap or the dip stick. 12,270 miles total on the clock and the gas mileage is still way up there and the lube level has not gone down much if any at all in 8670 miles.

I may consider a block heater after I close my office and move back home in the next few months if that actually happens . . . not looking good for my plans to build a garage office yet - brother conflicts.

My nuclear powered 800w block heater arrived today.

Havent really looked at it yet.

First thing to determine will be whether it'll fit the size heater hose already on the car. If not ?? there must be some kind of step-down adapter I could use.

Coolant heater installed.

So what was the opening diameters, end to end length and the material inside the tank?

Ends took a 5/8 I.D. hose (but there's a check valve in each end that makes it closer to a 3/8 effective I.D.) ; overall length is about 10 inches. And it's a metal tank, powder coated, not ABS (which is what it looked like in the photo).

Rather then epoxying the end of the T shut, I'd recommend a small length of hose with a metal plug and 2 hose clamps. With all the thermal cycling the thing will see, I wouldn't trust a blob of epoxy not to blow out at the worst possible time.

Good advice mrmad. I should do that.

My advice to get it working.

(1) Be careful, if it boils or you get an air-lock, then it might burn out.
(2) You must have the heater control on *full heat* or it blocks off the flow :) This is what happened to mine, luckily a fuse went rather than the
whole thing.
(3) Consider getting a small pump. A 12v one would do, together with a low-power 12v transformer. Get an impeller type pump that doesn't impede normal water flow. Use this to circulate the water around the engine for a much better coolant heating effect.

Without (3) above, it will not be very good at all, as, the water flow to/from the heater matrix is horizontal so convection will not work very well.

Finally, even my 3kw engine heater (currently needing to be serviced so my MPG is dropping) doesn't get my engine up to temp, but about half-way (which is well over the amount to avoid enrichment, and makes the engine run very smooth from the start).

Edit - maybe the reason for the temperature readings are as follows:

(1) It heats up due to convection
(2) It only heats up a bit more, as convection is inefficient
(3) Thermal cutout as the heater temperature gets too hot

It's got a thermostat... but I wonder if it would work if there's air in the tank - it might not transmit heat to the t-stat.

check!

The instructions were to place the tank several inches below the water pump return line, which I did. Also it's got check valves, so theoretically, once coolant starts moving "up-hill", it should draw flow from the heater core and start a loop going.

Anyway, I'll get a chance to have a second look at it this weekend.

I agree a pump would be best. Yet another reason to convert my water pump to electric (rather than adding an additional one).

Thanks for the tips.

would get more complicated but how about a one way clutch under drive pulley and an electic motor so that the electric motor could drive it when you want more capacity flow or engine off flow and the clutch pulley would drive it the rest of the time more slowly under light load. This way you will not have to worry about wearing out the electic motor - unless you are going brushless. You could also run a fan blade on the water pump to turn it by the wind flowing through the radiator at high speeds but I think it will require faster spinning than that.

The car is already close to being overly complicated from my mods! I certainly couldn't let anyone else drive it the way it is. I'd have to give them warnings & instructions about all the things I've disabled/modded - what switches work, what gauges to watch closely, etc.

Holy hot sauce Batman! 3kw coolant heater. How the heck do you plug it in, 240vac?

Anyway I have noticed mine not warming up as much as it used to. I believe though what is really happening is the thermostat opens sooner and starts to heat up the radiator, it never used to do that, maybe I blew the thermostat out? On the plus side it actually warms more coolant. It used to be I would start after 2 hours (1000 watt) and I would see coolant at 200F, then it would drop to 140F or so after a minute then slow climb again. Now it starts at 160 or so and stays there never dropping.