To the point, by wrapping electric heater wire around my injector lines I have created little electromagnets. The question is "Is this a problem?"

The long of it:
The type of heating wire that I bought has a lower power density than the wire that fattywagon uses. Mine only puts out 7 watts per foot. Because of that I needed to do something to increase the area the wire was applied to. I took a long pegboard hook (straight, about 6 inches long) and wrapped 2-1/2 feet of wire around it. It only took up about 4 inches. This is within the guidance fattywagon has on his website.

He says that the 100 watt wire will be enough for a 5 cylinder engine. 100/5=20 watts per line. He also says to use it as one continuous wire, so you don't get 100% contact and that means you don't get all 20 watts per line. Keeping with that I cut individual lines for my injectors and made them 2-1/2 feet long. You loose a little bit of that when splicing to the feeder wires, so I end up with a little over 15 watts per line.

Fattywagons instructions say to have 4-6 inches of wire contact per line. That means all 15-20 watts of heat are applied to 4-6 inches on his fuel lines. Based on that my 15 watts applied to 4 inches should be fine.

All that is great, but when I got done with my test wrap I realized that I had just made an electromagnet, with the fuel line as the core. Is this a problem? It should not be a strong magnet. There are probably a total of about 40 turns per line. Heck, the junk gadget guys sell "magnetic fuel molecule aligners" to help improve the gas milage on your car. (Busted on Mythbusters episode 53, the great gas conspiracy.) I'm installing them by chance.

-Jim

__________________
1995 S350D, Green with black leather interior.
Bought January 2008 w/ 233,xxx miles.
I did 22,000 miles during the first year of ownership.

Fortunately for you (and unfortunately for those who pay these con men), magnets have absolutely no effect on the fuel passing through the line.

Magnets won't have any effect on the fuel. Worst case, it might alter the coolant temperature sensor signal reading.

This is the kind of brainstorming I am looking for.

The coolant temp. sensor should be ok. It shouldn't read any higher or lower. It might have some noise induced on the line. It uses a resistance temperature detector and DC current. The heaters are DC so you will not have the magnetic field expanding an collapsing inducing voltage in the other wire. However, you will have a wire moving back and forth in a stable magnetic field...maybe it won't be ok. I don't think it will have much of an effect, maybe a little noise in the circuit. However I will try to be careful with the wire routing.

Thanks for the tip.

-Jim

__________________
1995 S350D, Green with black leather interior.
Bought January 2008 w/ 233,xxx miles.
I did 22,000 miles during the first year of ownership.

Depends upon which way you wound them, CW or CCW and also whether you are north or south of the equator.

Well, this thread has been viewed 85 times in the last few days and nothing has really been posted. I'll assume that this is not going to cause much of a problem.

-Jim

__________________
1995 S350D, Green with black leather interior.
Bought January 2008 w/ 233,xxx miles.
I did 22,000 miles during the first year of ownership.

Doesn't the metal's capacity to create electromagnetic field reduce or drop to 0 as the temperature increases?

Heat up a magnet and the polarity is misaligned.....

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1974 240D 3.0L 4(M) - 250K -OM617.910 + 300D FW + Rajay turbo power!
1977 6.9 3(A) - 84k