warm engine before starting

[Tobbemek]

In the early 80is something  i put a el-heater in the lower radiator hose on a 68 LTD with a 390" in it.  Young and unpatience i just cut the hose installed the tube with the welded bung where it seamed to bee best to get it easily done and out of the way installation.
Just to find out that it boiled the radiator next morning .
My installation was on the up wards sloop towards the radiator. A new hose and installation on the up wards sloop towards the water pump made it function perfect.
One do make a lot of surprising findings when you are young and eager to test tings and find results as quick as possible.  Ha-Ha wonder what a book with Young unexperienced findings working on cars would have looked like. Perhaps could have been a Christmas  special laughing fore old nut heads.   

[Stangman]

Cool video Heo are you like a mountain man or something. Do you own that vehicle?

[Heo]

Cool video Heo are you like a mountain man or something. Do you own that vehicle?

Not mine, its owned by a guy that collects Army vehicles but thats what i drove when i was in the Army early 80s.
BV 206,A real fun vehicle to drive. I think the US Marines have them now.
I just have a few Studebaker weasles T-24 and M29. No im not a mountain man,i think...live down by the coast
But i have to roam around in the forrest a lot to cut down and transport timber home
Was stationed up in the mountains in the Army though

[BattlestarGalactic]

Back when I had my '70 F100 in the late 80's, I ran 50 wt motor oil.  Arh, arh, arh.   Thicker is better, right?  LOL!!  It was a hot rod, it had to have hot rod oil.  Throw in the 85w-140 gear lube in the toploader and once you did get the motor started if you let the clutch out too fast, it would stall the engine.  I had to kinda work it out and get the transmission moving then adjust the manual choke to keep the rpm up enough to stay running.  With the Kat heater, at least keep the oil "warmer" and would turn over like it was much warmer then it actually was.

Ah, ya, to be young and dumb again.   Luckily the only thing that has changed is the age portion.......

[Heo]

Back when I had my '70 F100 in the late 80's, I ran 50 wt motor oil.  Arh, arh, arh.   Thicker is better, right?  LOL!!  It was a hot rod, it had to have hot rod oil.  Throw in the 85w-140 gear lube in the toploader and once you did get the motor started if you let the clutch out too fast, it would stall the engine.  I had to kinda work it out and get the transmission moving then adjust the manual choke to keep the rpm up enough to stay running.  With the Kat heater, at least keep the oil "warmer" and would turn over like it was much warmer then it actually was.

Ah, ya, to be young and dumb again.   Luckily the only thing that has changed is the age portion.......

Im familiar with that, you think you have it in gear because it jumps forward when you let up the cutch
And when you shift from first to second the car have stoped before you have managed to get it in second

[Katz427]

My grandfather had a 1947 ford pickup, flathead. I remember him going over to the milk house and getting a shovel full of hot coals from the boiler and setting them under the oil pan. He would do a couple chores, then comeback and the old Ford would start up, even at -30F. I used a lower hose heater, years later on my 70 F250. Both worked!

[fryedaddy]

thanks for all the great ideas.i think i will try the moroso pad.thanks everyone !

[Tommy-T]

This topic makes me smile and think of when I was young.

In 1980 I was employed at a Mercedes Benz dealer as an apprentice. One of my duty's was to perform pre-delivery inspections on new cars coming off of the transporters.

The dealership was in Pasadena, California, where on an extremely cold January night it might get down into the 40's.

In the glove box of every diesel car was a freeze plug looking "thingy" with a heating element and an electric cord attached to it. The first time I saw one I had no idea what it was. My mentor laughed and told me to pull it into my stall, drain the coolant into a clean container, pop out the easiest freeze plug to get to, install the block heater, and put the coolant back in. Then, roll up the cord and zip tie it securely somewhere out of the way...because it's never going to be unrolled.

Mercedes insisted we install them.

A few months later I went to Mercedes/Benz of North America training school. Next to me was a trainee from Fairbanks, Alaska. When talking about the block heater, he laughed. He said that they simply never turn the engine off...for months at a time. The cars also had a curtain dealer installed that you could work from the drivers seat that blocked air flow from the radiator.

Really!

[FrozenMerc]

Back when I had my '70 F100 in the late 80's, I ran 50 wt motor oil.  Arh, arh, arh.   Thicker is better, right?  LOL!!  It was a hot rod, it had to have hot rod oil.  Throw in the 85w-140 gear lube in the toploader and once you did get the motor started if you let the clutch out too fast, it would stall the engine.  I had to kinda work it out and get the transmission moving then adjust the manual choke to keep the rpm up enough to stay running.  With the Kat heater, at least keep the oil "warmer" and would turn over like it was much warmer then it actually was.

Ah, ya, to be young and dumb again.   Luckily the only thing that has changed is the age portion.......

That sounds familiar.  Back in Highschool (North-Central Minnesota) I drove a '68 IH Scout 800.  304 V8, T-18 4 speed, 4x4, etc.  Good little truck for bombing around.  Never found a ditch it couldn't drive back out of.  Anyways, it sat outside all year, no block heater, nothing.  Damn thing would always start right up, even at -30 F in the mornings before school.  But that 4 speed would get so stiff in the cold, it would take a few miles of warm up time to get it to shift out of first gear.  I got into the habit of backing it into it's parking spot so I could just drive away, because going from reverse to first with a cold trans was not going to happen.  Probably did tons of damage to the trans, but it never failed me.

[Heo]

Tommy-T thats why we dont buy Mercedes Diesels from a lumber jack
low milage but have been idling in the forrest every winter from November
to May

[bsprowl]

I tried several heaters when I lived in Omaha, Nebraska. 

Oil pan heaters are inefficient. Much of the heat escapes off the pan (outside the pan is too exposed to any wind) and little heat gets to the oil at the crank. 

I liked block heaters best, replacing a freeze plug. 

Tank or inline heaters using the heater hoses worked OK but it took them longer to effect the engine cranking (oil temperature at the bearings).

Bob

[fryedaddy]

i dont have to worry with the wind.my comet is in a garage,but no heat in it.that oil pan heater might be ok with no wind blowing under the car

[Tobbemek]

"The cars also had a curtain dealer installed that you could work from the drivers seat that blocked air flow from the radiator."

Yea remember those in 50-60is cars here in Sweden, that's why i put well pap in front of my Audi 2.5 TDI last week. Darn 5 cyl iron block wont com up in temp before15-20 miles driving with out it.
Back then one had to know a lot of things to bee a Automobile driver, thees days people don't even bather to check engin oil, arent they supposed to check engin oil at services.

[RustyCrankshaft]

On our trucks at work we used to run pan heaters and screw-in block heaters. I've found that the magnetic pan pads didn't work very well, but the glue on ones like the Zero-Start or Wolverine (I think Zero own Wolverine these days) worked a lot better. With the magnetic pads if the block heaters failed we'd still have to go out and ether the 2 strokes to get them to start, but with the glue on pads they would start by themselves (a little more cranking but they would start). Without any heaters, below about 35*F and the turbo'd 71 and 92 series wouldn't hardly start without melting the starter motors if you got them going at all (unless they were a low mileage fresh engine 200k miles or less).

Some of our off-road equipment had screw in immersion type oil heaters in the pan and no coolant heaters and they started just fine, but those heaters would keep the oil temp about 100*F. The pan pads, even the good ones weren't that good but they worked.

[cjshaker]

I couldn't afford all that fancy stuff when I was young and poor. I would aim a kerosene jet heater under the front of the car in the morning for about a half hour. I just made sure it was sitting outside so that it didn't burn down the garage..lol

On the flatheads, with the less than ideal 6 volt system, my Dad used to go out and start his '48 truck every couple hours and let it run for a few minutes so he could get it started in the morning and make it to work.