Possible options of a coolant pre-heater?

[homerj1]

Drop a second battery in there for good measure..  After all, real diesels (such as an Oldsmobile) have real batteries.. 

I always thought having 2 batteries would be a good move. Any thoughts on where the second one would go?

[8v-of-fury]

Ahh we think alike I already had plans to add a second battery for sure. I had a few ideas.. If you relocated your washer bottle you could probably run another battery with the same orientation as the normal one right behind it.. As on gasser cars the intake box and fuel dizzy go here, and are close In size to a battery.. Might have to have them touching, or move the original forward.. Second thought was to run em like the F-350's with one behind each headlight. Less favourable mostly because of the long run for the second batteries juice.. However scaving in a junkyard could easily source a good dual battery harness from a ford 6.9 or 7.3... And then shorten the one end? Pretty viable option.. And to keep weight more even and junk lol.

I would probably like them on the same side as I wil need to make an intercooler mount above the trans.. And it would be to have some flatbar already there for me to branch from..

[Toby]

You guys need a physics lesson. 600 watts is a very tiny heater but draws 45 amps @ 13.8 volts, which is likely to be way more than the total output of the 120 amp alternator at idle. A 600 watt coolant heater is going to take an hour to heat 2 gallons of water hot enough to heat the passenger compartment. Remember that hot water tanks are insulated. The antithesis of a heater core.

Trying to draw a continuous 70 amps + the normal load is likely to kill a 120 amp alternator in short order. Most import alternators won't run at full load for more than a few minutes before releasing the magic smoke. They are designed to charge a battery which does not take long in normal service. Many imports will fry the alternator before it can take a completely flat battery up to full charge in one long drive.

[R.O.R-2.0]

basically, just get a block heater and be happy!

[Vincent Waldon]

TDI Touaregs have an aux electric heater to back up the coolant-system heater loop... big sucker the same size as the heater core:



It draws upwards of 100 amps but sadly by all accounts on TDIclub has very little actual impact on heating the cabin, clearing windows, etc.   

Watts are watts unfortunately...be they electric or diesel.

Perhaps VW knew what they was doing back in the day with the tiny and super-efficient gas heaters in Beetles... man that sucker worked well.  Heated up instantly, tons of heat, and only burned about 1/2 pint per hour.  A friend of mine retrofitted one into his Datsun 510 one particularly cold Edmonton winter and it served him well.

'Course, they occasionally had the nasty habit of catching on fire... and since the outlet of the heater tended to be aimed at the driver's thighs... 

[Vincent Waldon]

Yeah... although I still have chipped tooth enamel from the chattering teeth one gets when a car manufacturer tries to use air exchangers to heat something aka early Beetles and vans.    The specific heat of air sucks in comparison to water for this task.

I suppose you *could* do exhaust -> water -> air ?

[vanbcguy]

The irony of the alternator driven options presented is the extra draw on the engine (and the resulting fuel consumption) would probably add just as much heat to the coolant as the device itself... Something to remember though - it may work out better than you might think.

In terms of alternator load, Jezzie came stock with a 60A alternator... 40A worth of glow plugs + headlights + blower fan + rear window defogger is quite a bit more than 60A.  Pretty much all the replacement alternators are only rated at 45A too, so it's a good example of a system with an initial load quite a bit bigger than the alternator output, yet the alternator seems to survive ok.

[8v-of-fury]

Well you see that's the thing! I don't mind the added fuel consumption, I mean on an engine that sips.. It can guzzle for all I care as long as I get quick heat . The idea here is not for use as a heater, or means to keep the cabin warm.. Just to get that initial warmup of the coolant! The tdi will have a hard time doing this as it is so efficient.. There is hardly any waste energy to be used as heat. This system will only be used in conjuction with the blower fan. So 60-75A total draw.. And with tthe 120 alt and underdrive pulley it will have zero issues at idle. In theory lol

[R.O.R-2.0]

wouldnt you want to over drive the alt so its making more power at idle, instead of less at idle?

not like a VW diesel can really over spin an alt anyway..  thinking i would overdrive it..

[8v-of-fury]

Typo lol. (Got caught up in muscle car talk where the goal is to have less hp draw from the engine ) Yes have a smaller pulley on the alt (about 1/2" smaller diameter) to make it spin faster at idle, effectively bringing the idle amp output up to around 85-90a at an idle of ~950.

Theory says it should work

[8v-of-fury]

Andrew, I missed your big long post back there! (ie. "Although I prefer to take a different approach WRT presentation, the gist of...")

I hear what you are saying.. I was mainly thinking of this as an option so that I did not have to worry about plugging the car in.. but I may just have to go that route.. as 110v is better than 12v clearly. Only thing is that my electric bill is already $300+ per month  Virtues of having a pool and sauna I guess?  Mind you I do not pay this bill.. just saying.. my contributions will be more if I am drawing that much more electricity for my use..

Would it be the same block heater as the 1.6's require? or is it different?

[8v-of-fury]

I just fired up my 1.6 N/A tonight at -15C (5F) and let the fan stay on the slowest setting, and it had the ice build-up (it has been sitting two weeks) on most of the windshield melting within like 10 minutes of idle time... I'm sure this amount would be decreased with driving, and adding heat to the coolant.. And the ice could have been gone immediately had I of scraped lol

But the TDI gives off less waste heat.. so i dunno man

[R.O.R-2.0]

Andrew, I missed your big long post back there! (ie. "Although I prefer to take a different approach WRT presentation, the gist of...")

I hear what you are saying.. I was mainly thinking of this as an option so that I did not have to worry about plugging the car in.. but I may just have to go that route.. as 110v is better than 12v clearly. Only thing is that my electric bill is already $300+ per month  Virtues of having a pool and sauna I guess?  Mind you I do not pay this bill.. just saying.. my contributions will be more if I am drawing that much more electricity for my use..

Would it be the same block heater as the 1.6's require? or is it different?

either power is expensive in canada, or you have ALOT more than just a pool and sauna drawing off that..

seems like the block heaters ive had experience with, use about $1 worth of power per night..

[R.O.R-2.0]

well, the ones ive had experience with, were not in pocket sized 1.6 diesels..

lol..

[8v-of-fury]

power is ridiculously priced in Ontario.. My house has a 400a service which comes in handy (but is also a pain.. we get many many "officials" asking if we are.. you know..) Not my fault my house was built by Germans who put in all 110v wiring and 220v wiring.. along with both gas furnaces, and electric base board heating... on top of a heated indoor pool and sauna..

Andrew, what temperatures is the 45mins pre-heat effective at?