Look wot I done today

[steve_earwig]

Where do I put this, Electrical? Mechanical? I dunno, shove it in General Chat.

To give my D8 a chance of warming up as I flit between our houses I've fitted one of these, which I got off ebay. It took about 20 minutes including jacking the car up:

The heater comes with instrukshuns, a tube of high-temperature silicon sealer (the remainder of which looks quite useful), an applicator that doesn't seem to have any purpose whatsoever and about 2 meters of flat cable. All you do is clean the sump, slap it on, seal around the edge with the silicon, run the cable somewhere useful and whallop the connector of your choice on the end.


Testing, testing... The pad gets bluddy hot straight away, after an hour the surrounding area of the sump is too hot to hold your hand on for long, however, the other end of the sump is just warm. Maybe I should have stuffed it in the middle but I was worried about the cable, seeing as I've got no undertray or owt.

Btw, all I've put on it is a fairly normal mains plug (for here), it's a bit beefier than the usual and I've sealed it up a bit. However, if anyone's got a better idea I'd be happy to hear about it.

[DaiRees]

OOOoooh, that's nice! Gotta be better for the car at this time of year. How cold does it get out there then Wiggy?

[mjb]

Good idea, but I can't help but wonder how much electric that'll cost in use...

I'd be careful about the cable routing too, looks like you've got it just a shudder away from being crushed, and ironically the last thing you want is to set fire to the engine

[steve_earwig]

How cold does it get out there then Wiggy?

That's the lowest I've seen it anyway.

Good idea, but I can't help but wonder how much electric that'll cost in use...

I've set the timer for 2 hours a day, that's .5kwh I suppose, or how much her mum wastes by leaving the telly on when she's asleep. Not weekends of course, or when my mrs works afternoons, I hope not to move it 'til it's warmed up enough.

I'd be careful about the cable routing too, looks like you've got it just a shudder away from being crushed, and ironically the last thing you want is to set fire to the engine

I've kept it away from as much as possible, I was going to route it over the intercooler pipe but then I thought it might get too hot between engine and gearbox. I suppose it would be better backwards but then there's a lot more that moves there. The other thing is being a flat cable it don't bend too easily. I'll keep an eye on it (along with the bottom balljoint nuts ). Maybe I could work a fuse into the plug, the whole lot's covered by an RCD though.

[Welly]

Minus twenty f*cking five

Excellent idea the [american voice] "pan heedur" [/american voice] your engine will love you

[teamster1975]

Good job Steve!
Has it started getting that cold yet this year?

[mjb]

aye, i wouldn't fancy running my pride and joy with what must amount to tar in the sump at that temperature!!!

[turbolag]

Modern oils are very temperature stable, so it's not much of an issue. something like a 5w 50 will be nicely trickly at that temperature. Problem with heating up a few square CM of sump is that the moment the oil flows it'll come into contact with ice cold metal and will cool again.

To properly heat up your entire engine by heating the coolant, and thus the whole shebang, you need one of these...

http://www.kenlowe.com/pre-heaters/cars/spec.html

[steve_earwig]

Has it started getting that cold yet this year?

Not yet, it was between -4 and 8 today, it doesn't usually start that sort of thing 'til January.