what do you guys use or carry that make your cold day start ups a lot easier?? any body ever see quick disconnects installed on a service truck that run the hot anti freeze from the running vehicle into the cold equipment, the equipment would also need the quick disconnect with valve installed also,just not sure where you would install the connections to make it flow properly. I think a buddy had a skidder from Minnesota that had this setup, just never seen it before.
I guess I don't understand how you would circulate the hot coolant into the cold engine with a closed t-stat? Maybe I'm missing something. Just seems like to much stress on your service trucks engine and cooling system. Plus, on today's vehicles, it seems every brand and engine has its own specific coolant that shouldn't be cross contaminated with other coolants.
most of the stuff I would work on is pre computer all the same coolants,why not tap into the heater core, pressure side out, then return side in,would this in rush of colder coolant cause stress on engine??
That setup is common on skidders to warm them up with a pickup, I've never heard of anybody doing it with a service truck, the different coolant types would be a problem, unless you maintain all your antifreeze the same. The other problem I've heard with the method is cracking heads from too much change too fast. That can be overcome by adding a circulating pump to the cold engine, and running off the heater hoses on the pickup. If you added a heat exchanger along with the circulating pump, you could heat the cold engine with no chance of cracking or mixing antifreeze.
That may work. I just think to get the hot coolant in the cold engine, you must first push out the cold coolant. Won't that be difficult with a closed thermostat?
The thermostat just shuts off flow to the radiator on most engines, if you hook into both heater hoses for instance you would circulate through the block and maybe heads just fine I think... There are some nice self contained diesel fired engine coolant heaters you can install.
yes this application was the skidder one,wondered why it was not used else where, but cracking heads would not be good.looks like a guy needs engine block heaters on everything if it has no glow plugs. in arctic conditions, when they change the oil, they claim to keep the engine running,how do they change the filter??
We use it on race cars to get heat in it to Qualifie. It's an electric box with a pump
Being in East Tennessee I'm glad I don't have to deal with severe cold problems all that much, just sporadic events at best. But the question, how do you use a service truck to assist equipment cold starts? Is this something you frequently have to do with a machine you need to work on? Or is the service truck being used as the vehicle that brings a jobsite fleet to life in the morning? Just asking out of curiosity. Again, I don't have to deal with this problem all that often. But just to throw something else out there, and I'm not suggesting this will be the solution to your problem, but something I have used on my service truck to help bring a frozen machine to life is an oil fired fan forced space heater and some tarps. Powered by the welder/generator on the service truck, one of those heaters can heat an engine up real quick.
mainly the service truck is used to get stuff up and running in the morning,i usually do not have to warm it up to work on, but sometimes this is nice on cold hands. just looking for ideas that mechanics use to get stuff up and going in cold conditions. one thing I seem to use a lot is the miller 302 air pac with the 24v/12v battery charge system,the battery charger gets used more then the welder.
Some of the tugboat engines I was around had dual oil and fuel filter setups. The fuel system was handy if you were in a tight spot (under tow, 70 knot winds, thirty footers crashing on the bow, barge trying to sail over the top of you, where it might be a tad inconvenient to shut a main down to swap out plugged up fuel filters.) You just opened up the ball valves for the bypass filter(s) and closed the ball valves for the filters you wanted to change out. There were of course bypass reliefs if you did a silly and closed off all the valves. Same deal on the oil filters but I don't recall having to use them, then again we seldom were outside for more than a week or two. Not like a run to American Samoa from Long Beach, that would have been fun.
I'm with you willey.. here in SC its going to be 79* on X-mas.. besides.. I don't work when its cold.. I don't work when its hot.. and I don't work in the rain.. LOL
Trying hard not to make some nasty reply! How you doing with the pain meds? Any progress on sorting through the shop fire remains?
LOL.. I'm down to one a day.. and trying hard to get to none.. I have a guy w/ a backhoe on stand by.. just have to rent the dumpster.. I had planned on it for next week but the rain is moving in.. There isn't a "landfill" that's close by or I would just get a dump truck.. guess I'll have to pay up for a container and let them deal with it..
I've heard of the idea of quick couplers and coolant, seems plausible but there is no way I'd risk it with my truck. You could potentially wind up causing a load of bother if the coolant was conataminated for any reason. When I was way up north, I has 12 and 24 on my Miller bobcat, (essential) mad a large herman Nelson I'd crane in and out. Yeah it was a bit of a trauma, but it worked.
We have used quick couplers and hoses to heat engines in the woods for the last 50 years. I can not comment on cross contamination as all our machines use the same coolant. We install Tee's with quick couplers in the heater lines on the truck that does the heating. We install quick couplers on the engine to be heated. One at the block drain and one out of the head behind the t-stat. I have never found an engine without at least two places to connect behind the t-stat. When ready to heat we connect the hoses, the outgoing warm one to the bottom of the cold engine. After connecting simply turn the heater control down so the valve shuts and it will push the coolant into the cold engine. In 10 to 15 minutes they start like summer. I always remove the supply hose first and wait a second before I unhook the return hose. This allows the now running engine to push a bit of coolant back into the heating vehicle. Other wise you lose a bit of coolant into the cold engine each time you heat it as when the engine cools it contracts a bit on the coolant and the head has some space that the jumper vehicle fills as it pushes warm juice thru it. The cold engine will later push it out the overflow when it warms up and expands the coolant. Years ago we rolled the coolant hose up under the hood of the jumper truck but know we use couplers on both ends as we can keep then in the truck. They are much softer and easier to work with when warm. Good luck on whatever you do.
Unless you a large fleet to start, what's wrong w/ a freezeplug heater in each rig and a little cheap 900w HF generator to power each one unless they're parked close enough to power off one gennie. Someone show up a couple of hrs early and get everything heating up. Mike
old iron, thanks for the info,do you ever have problems with cracking heads with this application??
we use Wabasco diesel fired engine heaters on a 7 day timer work very well or old school propane hockey stick heaters or propane pot heaters that you hook to your antifreeze lines, machines start very well in frigid temps
Espar or webasto heaters are the best way to go. Program the timer and the engine will be warm in an hour and ready to go to work when you get there. You can run the hot coolant through tubes in the hydraulic tank too for even better results. It's amazing how much heat they put out on very little fuel. I run an Espar air heater in my work trailer controlled by a thermostat. It works great. Maximum fuel use is 1/3 of a litre an hour.
Not sure what type of Equipment you are starting, if you are starting loaders, dozers and excavators on a regular basis. spend the money and mount a proheat on it. http://www.proheat.com They will warm engine and hyd oil at same time. uses fuel from the diesel tank right on the machine. Only takes 10-15 minutes. I think if you are staring big equipment in a remote location it the only way to go.
The Espar diesel fired coolant heater is really catching on around here too. It's made huge gains since equipment started to come with those dam modern (tier 4) engines that can't be left idling for long periods of time. On machines that don't work hard enough to heat up, we leave the Espar running all the time during the work day. Tier 4 engines won't go into regen if the temperature isn't up. They can go all winter and never complete a regen.......and that's not good. You pay for that later. For emergency cold weather starts, we try to use a Herman/Nelson type heater blowing hot air on the engine. Using the starter as a block heater can be expensive, and the old "tiger torch in the stove pipe" under the engine can have undesirable results as well.
wow, did not realize tier 4 regen problems in cold weather, lots of good ideas from block heaters to programmable diesel fired units,anything has be better then firing up on ether!!
Espar heaters are what we use on all the equipment. They are about $1000 for a 5kw kit. You can get timers that you send a text message to make them start. The problem we had is operators forget/don't know how to set the 7 day timer. A generator and block heaters would be more economical, if the equipment is always parked together. I'm assuming your already doing this, but winter oils will also help with the cold starts. I use 5w40 in the engines. In high load applications, I have heard of spinning a main bearing with 0w40, but have not personally ever seen it. In regards to coolant cross contamination, most standard coolants are ethylene glycol, which are generally ok to mix. The newer machines and trucks are all coming with oat coolant, which is they say turns to jello when mixed with standard coolant. I think dexcool that all GM's use is a oat coolant.
The coolant Heaters do work well, But if you don't have that option I've found using a torch with a lazy flame to heat the air in the intake the fastest way. It's never failed for me. Providing you have good fuel. When cold I always do it this way before ever trying to crank it. Truck Shop
Known espar heater be troublesome... There is a fuel heater option or add on to pre heat the fuel. Without it, below minus 20 they won't ignite. Aside that, a very good bit of kit. If mains electricity or a big gen set is an option, as well as block heaters, oil pan head pads work very well (sometimes too well!) and not just on the engine, on hydraulic tanks and transmissions.
We have never had a problem with any engine doing this. Our old Ford woods truck has heated other engines thousands of times over the years before we finally parked it.
January of 89 saw a cold snap on the Kenai Peninsula where the temp would drop about 10 degrees every night and that would be the next day’s high temp until it got to the minus 60’s and stayed that way for 3 weeks. To get my old Ford PU going I would point it toward the road and put it in first gear when I shut it off. In the morning I would take a cookie sheet and put charcoal briquettes that I got going and slide them under the engine. I would take about ½ for the engine to turn over and run. It was miserable for the 3 weeks and interesting how much stuff either breaks or does not work when it is that cold.
A rancher friend in N.D. has a remote off road feedlot where he keeps a loader tractor for feeding. He buried a 55 gal barrel underground that he has filled with antifreeze. He parks his tractor by it and when its real cold he hooks up his quick couplers and circulates 54 degree ground heated water thru his tractor via a 12volt pump. He sometimes has to ride a snowmobile out there when they have snowstorms. A few minutes of circulation and it starts like a fall day. Always another way to skin a cat.
I dk how bad this is but pointing my wife's hair dryer into the intake for few minutes before cranking seems to always make them start. I swear it works better then starting fluid. My dad talks about draining the oil and putting in a pan on top of their wood stove when he was a kid. He also said he remembers my grandpa hooking 24v to a 12v starter. He always says those engines acted acted like they couldn't wait to start once you ran 24v to the starter. Can't imagine doing that to any of today's equipment. Starting would be the least of your concerns at that point.
ol'stonebreaker ; I was thinking the same thing, seems to be a fairly cheap and easy solution. When I lived in the Adirondacks I could heat up an engine within an hour or so even on the coldest of days.
I like that work schedule. I think that out here in the desert of so cal I maybe able to live most of the year.
Get a Hilton cordless heater that burns LP gas and hook it up to your truck, use 20 or 30 lb barbeque cylinders and hook two together for extra capacity and have a auto switching valve on the tanks, should run and keep the engine warm for a week to a week and a half nonstop, takes a few milliamps of power off the battery once the catalyst is hot in the heater. On a cold day, it'll take about an hour or two to heat the engine till the thermostat kicks in to allow hot water to flow into the radiator. If you have a generator on the truck anyhow, the second option is to put a 220 volt tank heater on, as large of one as you can get, hook up also a hot water 110 volt pump from a house, cheap and easy, put a hand valve in line to control the pump flow, to keep the heater kicked in on high and wire the whole thing up so your generator can run it, takes about 15 minutes and your engine is hot and ready to go, have this exact setup on one of my machines we run in the winter, slickest setup ever and won't drain your battery on your truck or machine at all. With the Hilton cordless heater, you can run it for weeks at a time and have no real drain on the battery, with the diesel heaters, that's the reason for the timer, they suck a lot of battery power to run them and you have to start the engine and recharge the batteries, work great but a major drawback if you wait too long or you run them too much, your battery is dead and nothing runs or starts. Some of the units on semi's even have their own engine on them to run them, just for this reason. If the LP cylinders are hooked to the heater, the dot can't do anything to you as long as they are dot cylinders, which baroque grill tanks are, we also use a weed burner from a cylinder to shoot hot air at the intakes of cold engines to start them in a hurry if need be, far handier than a salamander heater for sure and doesn't require electricity. Where we have several machine at one site, with multiple LP heaters going, some machines don't have a lp tank mounted on them, just the heater, we use air hoses and quick couplers and park the machines close enough and then hook several machines to a pair of tanks to keep them warm overnight or over the weekend, as long as there is LP gas in the tanks, your fine, once they run empty, the heater will try to fire till the battery is dead. On one of machines I have this setup on, we have two batteries hooked up to it, one for the heater, one to start the machine, that way if one goes dead on the heater, my other one is still good to start the machine, we have a one way diode setup off the alternator to charge both batteries but won't drain both batteries if that makes sense.
Seems many of the Alberta folk are commenting about the diesel fired coolant heaters. I'd have to throw my vote under those as well. They are pretty easy to install - I've done several at this point - and they are very reliable. The heaters do seem to be necessary in this region on T4 equipment, as I've had to do a few service regens on ADT's that have been left idling all night in -20C or greater. Customers never enjoy that, as the service regens can take 3-5 hours to do. For frozen machines, I use a propane tiger torch with a long length of 5' or so thin walled pipe with a 90 degree bend at one end. The flame gets no where near the frozen bits, but all the heat is directed to where it needs to go. I've got stuff going in -40c with that method pretty easy. I haven't seen or heard of circulating coolant from your truck to the machines, but it seems like an interesting idea. I think I'd prefer to go the route of an espar, though, as its self contained on the machine itself, and will gradually warm it up.
That Hilton heater sounds interesting, I'll be looking into those. Thanks. Only issue I see with them is finding a location to mount a 20lb propane bottle on smaller machines.
Off, we have a couple on machines I don't have a place to mount the tank, so we use quick couplers for air hoses and hook the heater up on the machine, run the gas hose with a quick coupler on the end up into the cab or on the platform somewhere and just before we shut down for the night, sit a tank in the cab or wherever and hook up the hose with the quick coupler and open the tank, turn on the heater and let it heat up drawing juice off the battery when the engine is still running, after the heater element kicks out, which usually takes about five to ten minutes, the catalyst is hot and then the only electricity that's needed is to keep the gas solenoid open which is a few milliamps of power. Once its heating shut the engine off and your done for the night, in the morning, shut the heater off with a toggle switch and close the valve on the tank, unhook the quick coupler and put the tank in your pickup and use the machine, only hook up the tank when you need the heater, otherwise its in the truck or whatever you bring to the job site. A 20 lbs cylinder will last for days, can't recall the amount they burn per hour, but its not much, 40-60 hours per 20 lb cylinder or something like that, I use two 30 lb cylinders mostly, so its weeks they'll run without worry, or if your only going to use them overnight, I can usually refill once or twice a month is all. To keep dirt out of the quick coupler, we use another blank end to hook up with a plug in it, never had an issue yet with any of them I have, we've also used quick couplers on the heater hoses and moved the heater from one machine to another and just use clips to hook to the battery instead of hard wiring the harness into the machine. I use the RV tank auto changer to hook two tanks together, once one is empty it automatically switches tanks for me, that way one is empty before the next one gets used, makes refilling tanks much nicer. I've hooked up a couple tanks before and left it heat for over a week in bad weather when I wasn't sure when I would get back to the machine and use it. Otherwise it takes about three hours from starting the heater on the cold engine to 150 plus degree's on the engine if I wait till I get to the machine to start the heater up, takes about an hour and half to get the engine warm enough to start though if your in a hurry. Google Hilton cordless heater, can't recall the guy there that you need to talk to, but he's about the only one there to answer questions, pretty sure he owns the operation anyhow, he can answer any question you have about them. The last I knew, they made two models, both were identical but one had more catalyst inside it, they called it the high output heaters, those are the one's I have, can't recall the cubic inches they'll heat but its far overkill for my needs but they work great. Decades ago, a similar unit had a spark plug in them, worked on the same principle but these catalyst heaters are by far much better, virtually nothing to go wrong but a gas valve. I've been told there are remote places that have standby generators that keep the engines warm 24/7/365 with these heaters, hook them up a 500 gallon lp tank and a solar battery charger/maintainer and when the power goes down, the engines are always warm and ready to go, not dependent on any electricity at all, that way anytime they can start and run/check the engine and the heaters never shut off, quite a few LP delivery trucks in my area have them on as well, never shut them off and tap into the vapor side of the truck's main tank to feed them. A few sawmills do the same thing with their stuff, then at the end of the day, drive up beside a large 500-1000 gallon tank, hook all the heaters up to a single manifold and there are no tanks on any machine, just depends on what your needs are. Best of luck.
Things I do for dealing with cold, Make sure battery's are full of water and fully charged, charging system is proper. a small propane/butane hand held torch in the intake helps a lot, or wifes hair dryer, was mentioned. 10w-30 instead of 15/40, never tried t6 synthetic but im sure that would be another route, just more $. I have some 3inch? inch pipe with a 90 degree bend, about 3 feet long on the ground with a base welded together, a tiger torch fits inside and you can warm up engines, oil pans that way. And you can adjust the heat/flame output.