winter driving: sales of antifreeze and snow chains up

useful info, thanks

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember The Other Mike saying something like:

Interesting, cheers. I'll wait to see what happens with mine, but if necessary I can easily incorporate a circulating pump. The blower relay idea is a good one.

Thanks. It sounds as though covers and mains powered kenlowes are only useful at one end of the journey, i.e. you can cover the car and plug it in on your drive but you've got to leave the cover behind to drip dry and there will be nowhere to plug it in at the car park you are going to. Another reply said the covers freeze to the car or will be heavy when covered in snow, so I guess that's another idea to abandon.

Where do you position the fan heater? In a foot well? I've thought about this but always been too nervous to implement it because I could not see a way of keeping the fan heater away from upholstery. I would have liked a big gap between fan outlet and any chair. Otherwise it seemed like a fire risk to me.

I did wonder whether something like a tubular heater would be better but I see these are only quite low powered and with a car being so much glass I bet it loses lots of heat very quickly, and I wonder whether a tubular heater would be able to keep up with those loses? Any idea how many kW you need to heat a car?

I suppose even the surface of a tubular heater must get quite hot, so even then it would have to be lifted clear but what about attaching it to a plank and resting the plank on he back seat?

Thanks, Stephen.

Where did you get yours from and what model did you buy? Please let us know how you got on.

I hadn't realised such things were available cheaply in the US until I read your post, so I typed "block heater" into google.

I found some US sites selling heaters that screw in place of the oil sump plug but they say they are only for keeping warm oil warm and not to be used to warm cold oil, so I can't see that they are particularly useful. has anyone used anything like these?

I wasn't quite sure what a block heater was. Do some of them warm the engine without warming the coolant?

It seems that the best one to go for is the coolant circulating type. The warm coolant would then warm the engine.

I can see how oil heaters will vary according to how much oil your vehicle holds and the size of its sump plug but can you pretty much use any circulating heater for any car? As long as I import a 240v model will any do?

I guess you have to make sure you stick it on the engine side and not the radiator side of the circuit! But how easy is it to turn the blower on to warm the car? I wasn't sure how easy that would be now that everything seems to be multiplexed and ECU controlled?

Thanks, Stephen

Sorry if I have inadvertently opened an old debate. I am not quite sure what the gas law bit is all about, it's a long time since I was taught that at school. Something about pressure and temperature and volume?

I think what you are saying, please correct me if I've got this wrong, is that it might make a difference if you had a very big tractor tyre compared to a very thin bike tyre but differences of a couple of centimetres between those in the car manufacturer's list will not make any significant difference?

Thanks.

Temperature makes a significant difference to tyre pressures regardless of size. It's one reason why you should check pressures regularly; the pressure will change as the seasons do, regardless of the integrity of the tyre.

If I pull my car out out the garage to do the oil/water/tyre checks on a sunny day following a cold night, the n/s of the car is in the sun. During the 15 minutes or so that I'm doing under-bonnet checks, and cleaning the screen, the n/s tyres will go up in pressure by 2-3psi compared to the o/s ones in the shade.

Once I realised this, I started doing tyre pressure checks first.

Chris

[...]

Tubular heaters are 60Watts per foot, so would be more suitable for leaving on overnight.

Chris

Oil filled radiator if you're paranoid, they don't get excessively hot, but they are heavy & more expensive.

Keep the car in the garage, and wear scarf and gloves does it for me. ;-)

If you don't have a garage, buy a Ford with a HFS.

Chris

Nah, the argument goes that you can the size of the contact patch is solely determined by the tyre pressure & the weight. It assumes that if the rubber's in contact with the ground then the pressure on it equals the pressure in the tyre, which is rather simplistic, particularly when you're on something as non-linear as snow.

In message , Chris Whelan writes

I do all of that, plus my mountain walking gear (no crampons).

I remember having a small paraffin heater which I left under the engine of my old cars.

A lady friend came back from a 2 week holiday in Turkey, went to her 10 year old Micra which had been outside in 6" of snow, most nights below zero, and minimum temperature of minus 10°C one night.

It started no problem, but I bet her bum was cold when she got in it. :)

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Stephen saying something like:

He's still got a couple left, and possibly more. Turns out it's a 240V volt unit, which is fine for me, as it will be slightly de-rated. The

220V as advertised would have been ok here, as mains is nominally 230V in Ireland.

There are metal-metal block warmers, but they're not the commonest types. The ordinary cheap block heater simply replaces a casting plug and pokes into the block coolant space, ensuring the entire engine is up to a reasonable starting temperature.

The circulating type as above suits me perfectly, as the mounting space for it is under the battery tray, so it heats the battery as a useful extra.

As far as oil heaters go, there is a common type which sticks on to the oil pan, but most cars would stand a chance of wiping it off on rough roads, iwt. It seems a fairly common add-on for mid-West pickup drivers, where the wind comes whistling down the plains and the sump is higher up. I would think any 240V model would do - it's just a resistance in there. Mine arrived today and it's ready to mount, but I think I'll replace the mains cable with something a bit more heatproof and to my liking. The standard cable, while sturdy enough, might only be single-insulated by the look of it.

[...]

Just for completeness, 230v has been the harmonised mains supply voltage across the EU since 1st Jan 1995.

Like most things connected with the EU, it was achieved by words, not deeds. The tolerance bands in each country for acceptable voltage limits were moved slightly; in practice, nothing changed except the need for equipment to become slightly less voltage sensitive.

Chris

Sorry, you got a bit too technical for me there. Why will it be de rated? Is it a 60Hz vs. 50Hz thing or were you meaning the 20v difference?

I am guessing the coolant heaters are good in that they heat the coolant and the coolant heats the engine but the sump will stay cold. Is there any disadvantage to having cold oil in a warm engine? I suppose it would be best to heat both but as you say, for those of us not in 4x4s, there might not be room to fit a sump heater.

It looks like they cost about 100USD with shipping. Did you get stung on import duty?

You mentioned changing the flex. Can you completely disassemble it to do that then? I wasn't sure if it might be a sealed unit.

What size hoses does it accept? Is it a simple matter of cutting a hose and fitting it onto the heater or is there the potential nightmare of having to get the hose to fit with some sort of adaptor?

Does fitting require a complete drain down because I don't really want to do that in this weather! Or can you just clamp the hose either side to keep the coolant in and fit it quickly and painlessly? That sounds too good to be true.

Thanks, Stephen.

Heaters don't really car about the frequency.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Stephen saying something like:

Not at all - you'd be unlucky to, if it's less than a couple of hundred dollars worth and this time of year there's almost no chance of duty being applied to a parcel of this value. He ships USPS, which is more likely to avoid duty - UPS /FedEx deliberately seek out dutiable parcels so they can make money from charging you a rip-off 'brokerage' fee.

There's a couple of nuts on the base and the bottom should come of. Perhaps it's the single nut - more info to follow.

The instructions, while terse, make complete sense. It's supplied with a block drain plug adapter, which I don't have (thought I did, but no) so I'll be cutting into a heater hose or two. There is one adapter supplied, but it's easy to use a 1/2" plumbing tee to use on the return/feed as a second adapter. It's designed to fit standard 5/8" heater hose.

Clamping would be an option, yes.

All it needs is a bottom supply which must be lower than the top heated output where it joins the heater/block circuit. Essentially, the device must have a gravity feed so it can set up a thermosyphon loop.

Really? Do HMRC show Christmas spirit? I never expected that! Or are things different in Ireland?

That's good news. I was worried it might be designed for some US standard that required some conversion over here.

If it is standard bore size all the way through then I suppose that means it offers no resistance to the flow of coolant under normal operation. That makes sense otherwise there would be problems once you started the engine.

Oh. Is it just a heater in a tube then? I thought it contained a pump to circulate the coolant. I would have thought that would heat the water quicker but I suppose it would add cost and complexity to the design. Do all heaters rely on gravity heating? Even the kenlowes?

Is there ever a danger of it overheating or are the losses so great that the coolant can never get that hot?

Thanks, Stephen.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Stephen saying something like:

I can add a small circulating pump if necessary - got a few central heating pumps lying around. Kenlowes have a pump built in, but you pay for it.

Probably. Maybe. They are sized for differing coolant capacities.