To get back to the original idea of this thread...
Plenty of people have been using electrically heated injection lines for SVO use, including myself. I got mine here, this is the same guy who sold them on ebay for awhile and might still be doing so:
http://fattywagons.com/fwproducts.htmIt's a great way to get oil temps up right before injection. using something like an electric in-line heater (e.g. vegtherm, etc) to boost temps gets the oil really hot before it goes into the injection pump, but then it must flow slowly, slowly, slowly through the hard metal lines from the pump to the injector, where it cools off a lot again, esp if you're on the highway on a cold day so that cold air is flowing over the front of the engine all the time and cooling the lines off. better to heat it there and let it be just warm enough before the pump so that it flows easy.
100-120F is more than hot enough for the oil to flow easily through lines, filter, and pump, but is not hot enough to get good atomization and combustion in the cylinder. you need at least 170-180 for that, and preferably over 200. however, I don't like the idea of cooking my fuel pump with 200 degree fuel. I have a heated second tank, heated HIH fuel line, and heated filter, getting the oil up to good flowing temp, and then the line heaters give it the final shot to get it really hot before it enters the injectors. Of course, the injectors themselves are very hot, being mounted in the head millimeters from the combustion chamber, so you don't lose any temp there.
the only potential problem with this system is that it is possible, under certain circumstances, for the oil sitting in those hard lines to actually get TOO hot, at which point it starts to burn and create little carbon particles in the fuel that do not do anything good for your injectors. one situation where this might happen include sitting in traffic on a hot day, where the engine burns fuel very slowly so that fuel sits and just creeps through the hard lines, which are baking (people have seen temps of over 350F with electric heaters in those kinds of idling conditions, and that's BEFORE the fuel enters the injector which could be even hotter).
right now I have the heaters hooked to a switch on the dash, which I just cycle judiciously in that kind of situation to avoid overheating. my long-term plan is to get some kind of fuel temp readout on the lines right before the injectors (apparently BBQ and infrared thermometers work well), have that read out on the dash, and then wire the line heater circuit with a variable-resistance switch. the heaters draw only about 8 amps, less than the blower fan does, and I have a spare Rabbit blower switch which should therefore be well able to handle regulating this circuit. I was going to use that to give me three different current settings so I can be pretty precise about how much electric heat I lay onto those hard lines.
anyway, the kit is cheap ($40 when I bought it), well-made, and in my opinion a great addition to a veg system. I would not use it as the only element for running SVO unless I was driving a 617-powered Benz in the middle of summer in Texas without some other kind of heat elsewhere in the fuel system. however, as a way to improve atomization without jacking up fuel temps sky high way before the fuel is injected, putting the fuel pump under a lot of heat stress and drawing a lot of current (vegtherms take a lot more than 8 amps), I think it's a pretty good setup.
hope this helps...
George
