Injection Line Heater
10/29/06 05:37 PM Filed in: Alt. Fuels
I've noticed that the car is a little harder to start
in the cold weather -- well, cold for LA, that is.
Lately, some mornings have been in the 60's in the
early morning, and it takes more cranks until the car
starts.
Today Dean and I got together and installed an injection line heater on my car. We just finished reading the instructions and gathering all the tools for the job when the neighbor's sprinklers started, and they sprayed us in the driveway. We weren't sure how long they would run, and nobody was home next door, so we had to get creative and put a "diffuser" on the problem sprinkler -- it worked out pretty well:
The heater kit we got was basically an insulated heating wire with a positive lead and a ground. The wire is run along the injectors, taped on with a silicone tape. The areas we didn't tape, we sealed up with a red silicone goop (High-Temp RTV Silicone Gasket Maker). The heater is wired to the accessory in the fuse box, so it goes on as soon as you turn the ignition key one click. In 30 sec - 1 min, it heats up to 200 degrees. This should help starting on cold days and also the engine should burn oil better all the time because it'll be heated to a higher temp.
The injectors before we started:
We used several small pieces of the silicone tape to hold the heater in place before taping all of it:
The injectors taped:
We used the red silicone goop on the heater where it jumped from one injection line to the next:
Grounding it to the engine block (green wire):
Today Dean and I got together and installed an injection line heater on my car. We just finished reading the instructions and gathering all the tools for the job when the neighbor's sprinklers started, and they sprayed us in the driveway. We weren't sure how long they would run, and nobody was home next door, so we had to get creative and put a "diffuser" on the problem sprinkler -- it worked out pretty well:
The heater kit we got was basically an insulated heating wire with a positive lead and a ground. The wire is run along the injectors, taped on with a silicone tape. The areas we didn't tape, we sealed up with a red silicone goop (High-Temp RTV Silicone Gasket Maker). The heater is wired to the accessory in the fuse box, so it goes on as soon as you turn the ignition key one click. In 30 sec - 1 min, it heats up to 200 degrees. This should help starting on cold days and also the engine should burn oil better all the time because it'll be heated to a higher temp.
The injectors before we started:
We used several small pieces of the silicone tape to hold the heater in place before taping all of it:
The injectors taped:
We used the red silicone goop on the heater where it jumped from one injection line to the next:
Grounding it to the engine block (green wire):
And connecting it to the accessory on the fuse panel.
It's the blue clip on the bottom, connected to fuse
#4.
