Quote:
Originally Posted by Jooseppi Luna
Not to change the subject, but I just had an idea. If you have an electric water pump and a block heater, could you hook up the water pump to cycle periodically while the block heater is on to circulate the warm coolant around and heat the engine more effectively?
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I think the bypass flow through the radiator would act as a heat sink and lower your overall temperature. Parking heaters like the Webasto ThermoTop EVO 5 do use a water pump but they also put out 5KW of heat. The average block heater is only around 1KW.
Another problem you'd have is water pump power consumption. If you use your auxiliary water pump you'll need a 12 volt source that can run for the long period of time needed by the block heater. Even using periodic cycling the total time would be significant. The Webasto also runs on 12 volts but 5KW gets the job done in about 20 minutes.
Either way it might be an interesting cheap experiment. Temperature could be monitored at the engine temp sender using an ohmmeter for better low temp resolution. VDO publishes the temp/resistance chart for these online. You could run the pump from a 12 volt supply cycled by a simple relay circuit and a 555 timer. You could also run it continuously at first and then lower the duty cycle until you hit the sweet spot. A lower average temp with a more even distribution might give better cold starting. If you can get the head to 40 degrees it will start.
Another idea is dual block heaters and a pump for rapid warm up.