Anyone ever have a coolant hose connector on dozer that allows you to preheat the engine by circulating coolant from a pickup to the dozer? Didn't know how well it would work or if there are hose kits available.
I have seen it done with normal pioneer hydraulic couplers. Put couplers in the heater return line on the pickup. 2 hoses with couplers on each end and fittings on the dozer where ever you see fit. In the am take couplers apart on truck, pull hoses from bed of truck, couple to dozer and climb back in truck to enjoy coffee for a bit. That is why you install in the heater return line otherwise you have no heat while waiting. This can all be done with simple heater hose, pipe thread to hose barb connectors and 4 pairs of couplers. All available at any farm supply store. Remember to make the hoses plenty long so you dont have to have the pickup tight to the dozer. Also you will have to add enough antifreeze to fill hoses the first time they are hooked up.
and remember to maintain both your dozer's and pickups coolant to the same standard
Last fall I bought a propane heater at a yard sale used for keeping an engine warm all night. Same idea as above but instead of using your truck you plug this heater into your engine using pioneer fittings. You light the torch part and it's installed into the bottom of the heater which is shaped like a 5 gallon pail, this heats the coil inside and the hot water starts to circulate, thermo syphon. I'll try to get a pic of this thing when I get time. Was very popular with skidders.
A lot of loggers use the pickup to skidder heater hose connection described above. They call it the "Spit Swapping " method around here
Very popular up here also
Used to do that alot with the crusher engine and dozer engines during winter. Worked very well...when the truck started blowing heat back on you, you knew the engine water was warmed up. Haven't used it for number of years though. Trbo
Personally I've always been leary of putting ice cold coolant back into a warm motor. Don't know how the gas motors are but the newer diesels are hard enough to get heat out of idling when it's cold let alone trying to warm up another motor. We've used a couple of different methods in the bush over the years. Currently have a hot box heater hooked up to the skidder and Cat and possibly our new excavator(still on the fence yet) Before that we used a hockey stick heater. Same pricipal but smaller scale and not portable. Had a webasto heater on our loader but that crapped out after the first year and so far hasn't been made to work again. Couple of pics that I uploaded from before of the hot box heater. Not sure if it'll work or not. Ryan
That's the same heater I was talking about that I have. I haven't tried it out yet but heard they work good.
It works pretty good on the skidder. Half a hour to a hour at 0F and the engine is getting warm. Been looking at adding a circulating pump to it for the Cat though. Takes quite a bit longer to warm it up. Biggest thing with them is to make sure you don't have any drops in your hot line. Have to have a constant rise to get them to circulate properly. Ryan
Where do you connect the hoses into the engine?
I asked my heavy equipment mechanic about this. They just use a piece of exhaust hose, well placed into the engine compartment for a half hour, exhaust from pickup truck gets the engine is warm as toast. Hook jumper cables up at the same time, and your can start in any condition. I think I'm going to give it a try.
Every motor is a bit different but genearlly one goes in the block and one near the top of the head. watglen. I'll admit I'm skeptical that would work here. Maybe in a warmer klimate. Would need lots of insulation and cover I think for it do warm anything up around here. Let us know how it works though if you try it. Even just heating the intake air can make a world of difference on how something will start. Ryan
Just helped my brother in law start a skidder, a tree shear, and a log loader with his pickup today. Poor fellow had a tree fall on him yesterday and is not going to be working for about 4 months so I moved his equipment home for him. We used a old Ford pickup for years heating logging equipment. It showed 280,000 miles plus who knows how many idling hours on that old six and it was still running when the truck rusted off around it. Temp did drop a lot when the water started to circulate. Not sure the new engines would hold up though. If you go this route remember that the head of the cold engine is always a little bit low due to condensing when cooling from running temperature. After a number of starts you will find the hot water doner will need to be topped off. I always start the machine before disconnecting the quick couplers and then disconnect the supply side first. The newly started engine will push a bit of coolant back refilling the vehicle used for starting. That seem to stay pretty even that way. Good luck.
Well Ryan, I would love to give it a try just for the hell of it really. Problem is figuring out where to plumb the lines in. I can't say I'm really familiar with engines. This tractor uses something called a dual pass radiator, which means the hot and cold lines both come off the bottom of the rad. There is a housing on the right side of the engine which has a pulley --- must be the water pump. Another housing may contain the thermostat above the pump. I found what I assume is one cab heat hose. What i should do is post pics of the various fittings on the engine, maybe someone can say where the connections should be made. I know enough that if I get it hooked up wrong, I will end up circulating hot fluid through the rad, or cab heat circuit, and the engine will stay cold. I want it hooked up so I know the hot fluid will circulate through the block and nowhere else. I will get some pics posted.... Stay tuned, Ken
OK, here we go. This image show the right side of the engine. I think the large steel line is the hot coolant return line going to the rad. The rad ports are both on the bottom. The 1" rubber line is rises off the water pump to the top of the rad. I think this is the thermostat housing. There is a large rubber line from the top of the water pump into the bottom of this housing. The heavy line off the top moves water to the hot side of the rad. I wonder if that plugged port on top would be of any use??? This is the water pump under the thermostat housing. You cant see the line connecting the two. The elbow feeds the 1"line going to the top of the rad, and a smaller valve and line which feeds hot water to the cab I'm guessing. Again, there is a port or two on the pump housing which may be useful. another of the pump the pump and lines again So If i have this right, the pump pulls water from the bottom of the block, pushes out two lines. The smaller goes out the elbow, and either feeds the cab heat circuit, or goes to the top of the rad. A larger hose carries water off the pump into the bottom of the thermostat housing, where it is directed via the thermostat, either back into the top of the block or out to the rad. If the unused port on the top of the thermostat housing was on the engine side of the circuit, I could push hot water in there. I could locate the cold side of the cab heat circuit, tee in, and return cold water out of the block to the pickup truck from there. I need someone to confirm I have the flow right, and where those ports actually go.
Sorry watglen I can't offer to much advice. Little hard to picture it without being there. I can say this though, if your going to use a truck or something of the like to circulate the coolant you may be able to hook into the heater lines and circulate the coolant that way. That's how we hooked up the webasto heater on our Volvo wheel loader. Worked excellent till the heater didn't work any more. Got two of the bloody things and neither will fire up when you want them too. I'm looking at plumbing in a circulating pump into our propane fired heater that I posted pictures of to see if it will help heat up the engine faster. Got two of em on those webasto heaters that will likely never get used again. Ryan
Put shutoff valves in the heater core lines and connect to the engine side of them with tee's and quick coupler. Just shut the valves while heating the block. I put the hot to the ottom of the block, my brother in law puts the hot to the top of the block. Both seem to work equally well. Takes about 15 minutes to heat a 4-53 from -20 to start without either.
The probably is the simplest old iron I will have a look Ken
A good generator and a inline block heater seems to be a little less complicated to Me .
Until you get into the sticks and the generator wont start. Now what???
Block heater is useless when overnight temps get well below freezing. Could work if you plugged it in at end of day, and left it plugged in all night. Or multiple heaters. But yeah, we need to get the machine warmed up and ready to run in minutes, not hours. And there is no street power available.
Minutes???? I don't know about other guys but getting the engine started is one thing, no way in hell is my machine going to move in less than 10 mins AFTER it's running unless it's coming out of a heated shop. Is this some sort of emergency service? I know of lots of contractors here in ND in the oil patch that use the diesel light plants. When its -20° I don't think there is anything that will get you moving in minutes.
A propane Tiger Torch(weed burner) inside a piece of pipe is very common for getting equipment going out in the boonies. Just make sure the pipe is long enough and you adjust the flame so it isn't shooting out the end of the pipe. You just want the heat coming out the end. A 90 deg. elbow helps direct the heat up when placed under the engine on the ground. Some guys don't use them in a pipe but using about a 3' section of pipe is safer than using the open flame alone. Don't try to heat a cold engine instantly though or you might end up burning it to the ground.
You must have used a low wattage one (400W). If you have 1,500W it will warm up in half an hour. Want it faster you make your own bigger electric heater. I've always wanted to make a pipe within a pipe heater like the "circulating" heaters that hook up with heater hoses. Heat it with propane torch or charcoal. But the plug is so much easier.
I said A good generator
I've been adding the espar diesel burning heaters to machines here. They come with a timer that starts the heater automatically. 2 hours is more than enough time to have the engine warm. You can also plumb it thru your hyd tank to warm it up. They come in 12 or 24 volt. Easy to install.
I'll agree with Mobiltech, the espars are the way to go, they'll cut in at I believe 70 deg F and out at about 170, just before the thermostat opens, keeping the engine at optimum temp. They are programmable, will come on 2 hrs before anticipated start time, yet 45 minutes are all they really need for starting at -30 deg F. Old school hooking up hot pickup engines to -30 engines was done for years, and it cracked heads for years too, a 200+ degree change in seconds was too much to take for a lot of heads. They can be bought for about $1000 here in Canada, and are easy to install, they have they're own water pump, so no worries about convection circulation of water. They're simple to operate and troubleshoot, I'm thinking if you can figure out how to post on this forum, you can set them and retrieve codes.