Diesel Parking Heater for Extended Winter Range

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oilerlord

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 20, 2016
Messages
126
Hi Guys,

I'm picking up an Espar D5E diesel heater and with my guru's help, will be installing it later this month. It's the hydronic version that we're going to tie into both the cabin and battery heater lines. If all goes well, I'm looking forward to all that glorious heat without killing half my range. Here are the specs:

blT7zbY.jpg


I'll update this thread as the project continues.
 
Oilerlord,

Weren't you talking about doing this early on? Or was it something else? In any case, look forward to following as my range suffers even at my lattitude (NYC).
 
Yes I was.

I figured it would be best to go one winter before trying this to see if I can make do without it, so I ended up doing a lot of research on which heater would work best for our cars. There were only a few instances where I had to do some quick calculations to see if I had enough range to make a round trip, but I found myself cycling the heat on/off more than I wanted to in the effort to preserve range. I also was discharging much deeper into the battery and charging to full almost daily. Not good if I'm going to have a chance at hitting 100,000 km (about 62,000 miles) without significant battery fade.

The cooling / heating system looks fairly easy to tap into but we'll probably run into a few issues like where to mount everything, and where to run the hoses & exhaust. The goal is bringing back summer range when it's as cold as -20C outside - while blasting the heat. We'll see.
 
This seems pretty extreme, but for extreme cold, it looks appropriate. I just got a pretty simple solution for heating -
https://www.homedepot.com/p/DEWALT-...MAX-Battery-and-Charger-DCHJ060C1-L/206314126
I already have Dewalt tools, so batteries are easier to swap. Bosch and Milwaukee make similar jackets and hoodies. The heating on this is fairly mild, but it stays close and builds up over time and lasts a few hours at a time.
 
Oilerlord,

Your situation is challenging, agree. Good luck with your modification.

Like mddg, I have tried a couple of things to warm the driver/passengers:

1. Portable electric heater plugged into large rechargeable battery. Never really worked as heater tripped breaker on battery.
2. Electric blanket for rear passengers to sit on plugged into said battery or car. OK with battery, drained car battery.
3. Standard heated car seat pads plugged into car. This seems to be efficient and did not drain battery as fast as the blanket.
4. I intend to keep my car inside a commercial garage overnight (park the gas wagon outside) to avoid worse of chill. Researching local garage who will allow me to plug in overnight.
5. Do what wtzouris outlined in an earlier post, heated front seat plus front defrost on low fan.
 
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