Diesel heater

puffernutter uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Oil cooler of a 1979 Jag Autobox would be just the job fitted in the water system .. no heater required then. I would be tempted to have a tap though and seperate tank, tap would need to sort the return as well so as not to empty one tank in to the other.

Lee D

hmm. prechuffers :)

wont it cut out after it has reached the temp on its thermostat anyway? You could use something like the alternator charge light to switch the heater off? (so it wont run when the engine is off) if you switched it on with the preheater feed perhaps you could use one of those timed preheater relays to make it stay on initially when the charge light is on?

He needs it to preheat before he starts though doesn't he ? Though surely the bulk of the pressure drops of pumping viscous fluids are in the pipes to/from the tank.

Steve

im sure ive seen timer relays befroe but i cant find any on the net now, so..

Could you not have the diesel heater fed from 2 supplies.

1 - piggybacked off the engines glow plugs (or fed by the glow plug position on the ign key) 2 - ignition while charge light is off (an ignition live feed going through relay controlled by the charge light)

the fuel heater would be turned on whenever you used the glow plugs to start the car (i.e. coming to it first time in the day) and whenever the engine was running.

turn the engine off and leave the ign on and the heater would not be running cos the charge light would be on

Many thanks to you all for the suggestions. I will take them on board and let you know how I eventually wire it.

For your interest (and other potential veggie oil users)

As I am sure that you all are aware the veggie is thicker than diesel, particularly at the lower temperatures. I have a "water" heater for the veggie, but of course that is only effective when the engine is warm. However, believe it or not, one of the biggest "cooling factors" in the 110 is the fuel filter, hence the use of the heater prior to the filter.

This doesn't help with starting and when finances run to it I plan to run to a proper two tank system (I have the tank, just missing the valves and plumbing) so that I can start on diesel in the very cold weather.

In the mean time, does anybody have a fuel filter sized piece of a thermal insulating blanket (the thin, silvered sandwich sort!) that I can wrap around my fuel filter. I have only seen it sold in huge sheets !

Cheers

Peter

1990 110 CSW "Reggie the Veggie"

car-gas in stoke on trent (an lpg place) also sell valves and taps and plumbing sundries for biodiesel conversions if you are stuck.

i bought a big sheet of self-adhesive shiney sound/heat proofing for the 101 and can probably dig you out an offcut or two if that sort of stuff would do?

Wrap a coil of insulated nichrome wire round the filter ? Either arrange that the dissipation is small, say less than 40W, or large and thermostatically controlled .....

Frosts do something for exhausts as a tape that might help.

Steve

Tom,

Many thanks.

Yes please.

Cheers

Peter

What sort of size are you looking for, kinda like a couple of beer mats stuck together size bits? I have a bag of offcuts saved somewhere i just need to find it! :)