OT Gas Truck Preheater

Does any one have any experiences with an engine preheater. Ive got a F150 with the 5.4L and it takes a dang long time to warm up on these cold mornings. I was looking on JCwhitney and saw they have preheater that just circulate warm engine coolant via a heater hose. Is this a worthwhile invest ($70)? I was thinking I could hook it up to a timer (like for christmas lights) so it would turn on about an hour before I go to leave in the morning and my truck would be nice and warm?



Thanks
Tom

Change the thermostat.

Greatest thing ever invented I use them on all my cars and trucks! What you spend on the heater you will save in gas in warm ups, not to mention what they do for starting..

would prob. take longer to do that but if your thermostat is working you should be able to step out and start it 3-5 min before you leave and it should be warm or really close and that prob. takes less $ and gets your fluids warm and circulating before you put it in gear. I warm up my car in the mornings and it only takes a few min. to start thawing the frost.

When I was in ND I always had whatever vehicle I planned to drive plugged in an hour or two before starting.

A block heater is cheaper/more efficient than one of those circulating tank heaters, as they only heat the coolant in the block.

A pre-warmed engine will have less wear on start-up as well in cold climates, too.

And, last time I checked, electricity is still cheaper than gas as far as generating heat/energy.

Just get a command start installed and start your truck from the house 5 minutes before you leave. You will come out to a nice warm truck, windows clear, all ready to go.

..exactly!

Anouther opinion from a guy from from ND. Sounds like you have no problems starting, just want to warm up quicker. In my experience those engine heaters help with starting but have no real advantage with warm up time. Hanging a heat lamp from the lamb shed on a diesel tractor motor worked fine also. Now days with gas motors having fuel injection, 800+ CCA batteries and synthetic oil they have little use. Check that the thermostat is working and not installed upside down. I discovered while going to college in Grand Forks, about the coldest place in the world or so it seemed, that small aluminum 4 cylinders warm up way faster that big cast iron V8s.

I know we have a lot of heat and humidity here in SE NC, but I don't envy you guys in the colder climates with all the ice and snow.

Is you vehicle gas or diesel?

Install the preheater the kind that goes in your bottom radiator hose.

There is a bypass hose (on vehicles) that lets water circulate thru your engine and heater core in the cab. This gives you heat long before the thermostat opens. It bypasses the thremostat. If you thermostat was in upside down your engine would already be fried.

If it starts ok then I would just put a piece of card board in front of the radiator and just cover about 2/3 of the radiator if you concerned about just heating up your cab.

Is you vehicle gas or diesel?

Install the preheater the kind that goes in your bottom radiator hose.

There is a bypass hose (on vehicles) that lets water circulate thru your engine and heater core in the cab. This gives you heat long before the thermostat opens. It bypasses the thremostat. If you thermostat was in upside down your engine would already be fried.

If it starts ok then I would just put a piece of card board in front of the radiator and just cover about 2/3 of the radiator if you concerned about just heating up your cab.

Is you vehicle gas or diesel?

Install the preheater the kind that goes in your bottom radiator hose.

There is a bypass hose (on vehicles) that lets water circulate thru your engine and heater core in the cab. This gives you heat long before the thermostat opens. It bypasses the thremostat. If you thermostat was in upside down your engine would already be fried.

If it starts ok then I would just put a piece of card board in front of the radiator and just cover about 2/3 of the radiator if you concerned about just heating up your cab.

As previously stated. A new stat and use the electric block heater.

block heater that takes the place of a soft plug, work better than the other heaters that go in the hoses. If your radiator is higher than the engine, lower radiator hose heater won't work. Heat will flow up into radiator.

I have an '01 Ford with the 5.4 and while going to school in Michigan's UP I had a soft plug style block heater installed at the ford dealer. $70 for the heater, $30 for the cord and $65 labor. I had them install it and change the antifreeze at the same time. 2 hours and it would be up to 100-110 and off I'd go.

Hmmmm,

I don"t know how you have yours plumbed in, but in my F350 the tank heater I have will heat up the cab and warm the engine. I leave the defrost setting on when I am done for the night and the tank comes on with a timer early in the AM. Just melts the frost and ice off the windshield by the time I come out.

There are several different types of engine heater, including the frost plug heater, the lower radiator hose heater, the percolator tank heater and the heater hose model. The first 3 require that the coolant be drained for installation of the device and can be fairly difficult depending on how the vehicle is set up. I think it would be a real pain to install a frost plug heater in many of the vehicles I have, because there just is no room to work. The lower radiator hose heater isn't too bad if there is room around the top part of the hose, but on most rigs, you will really need to be bent over to do the work. The percolator tanks work great, but the ones I have used required the tank to be more or less upright in a space away from the exhaust system and require a fitting and hose to the block coolant drain as a source for the cool liquid to be heated. The other hose T's into the heater hose return line. They work great and are a first choice, if there is room for them.

The heater hose type heater I have installed fit right in a heater hose, and didn't require draining the system or anything except cutting a section out of the heater hose that returns coolant to the engine after it has gone through the heater core. It was very easy and heated the engine fine, as well as putting some heat into the cab. But it seemed to me that the heater put a flow restriction on the coolant going through the heater, and that the heater was never as strong after I installed it. But it was easy and the heater cost about the same as the percolator tank type. The core hole type and lower radiator hose type heaters were about $20 less costly.

If you install a heater hose type heater, it is important that there not be a valve in the heater hose circuit. If there is, and it is closed when you plug in the heater, the heater will probably burn out after it has boiled away the coolant around the element.

Good luck, I sure like having plug-in heaters on my rigs.