I'm surpised that they have them. How cold does it have to be so the engine won't start, or does it just make starting a bit easier on the engine? It gets below 0 deg. F here and I've never had a problem starting, but I imagine that Canada would be a different story.Every diesel engine around herehas one, but I've never seen one on agasser. I looked for mine but couldn't find it either.

 

It's not that I"m worried about cold starts in specific. It's the fact that I live in Canada. Where I live the temperatures can drop as low as -30C for days and that's not including the wind chill. As for a timer I thought it would be a good idea due to what DaRover said about leaving the fluids hot with out circulation. I was also looking at it from an engergy conservation point of view.
When I was in the military, the barracks parking lot all had plugs for our block heaters but those plugs were on a 3 hour off 20 minutes on timer.
So that's where I was going with that.

Now that I've found my heater plug,keeping in mind thatmy Discovery has been exposed to a -33 day with the windchill, it started with ease and warmed up quite quickly.

As for the battery;

The battery is less than 5 years old and the connections are clean and look to be in good condition. I have thought about an after market battery warming blanket but I think that's just getting a little to carried away.

Thanks all for your time,

TTech870

 

Jkid,

I'm going to speak from my personal experinces only. Therefore if any of the wrench benders or former wrench benders on the fourm have input it would be greatly appreciated.

In extreme cold weather there are factors that compund on each other which would prevent a engine from not starting. A few are:

[ul][*]Moisture in the gas line causing it to freeze.[*]Leaving the vehicle exposed to the cold for a long period of time with out starting it for a few moments on a regular basis. By that I mean, it's -30 , the wind is blowing, there are no wind breaks and it's your days off so you decided not to leave the house. Which causes the battery to freeze among other fluids[*]As for how cold does it have to be for an engine not to start ? That depends on how much moisture is in the fule or the gas line. I don't know that freezing point of water when it's mixed with gas so I will not say the temperature.[*]A battery that is old or has corrosion on the connectors[*]Poor vehicle maintaining[/ul]


As for what a block heater does, I'm not a professional mech so please correct me if required, it warms the fluids in the transfer case so that when the engine starts they are able to circulate easily through out the engine causing less stress parts and causing the engine to have to work harder during warming to move those extremly viscious fluids around.

I hope I helped.

Once again I would ask the mechanics to correct me if I'm wrong any of the above points.

TTech870

 

They warm the engine coolant, which warms everything in the engine. I just never thought about the fact that I've never seen one on a gas engine, great idea though.My old diesel car won't start below 10 F without one.

I use a timer for my block heater. At 500 Watts they'll use a lot of electricity over the course of the winter.

 

I am new to Landrover, do all landrovers with winter packages come with engine heaters? I thought only diesels come with the engine heater?

 

The winter package includes the heated seats, heated windscreen and block heater. The only reason why anyone of those would be missing, would be if a previous owner added certain options himself without adding all three.

Plugging an engine causes warmer start-ups and faster warm-ups, which are both very beneficial to an engine in Canadian winter conditions. It is true that I found the Rover to start easily without having been plugged before starting it up. But I like to know that I do all that I can to take care of my Rover whenever the situation permits.

Also...Objects are not affected by the windchill factor. The only effects that it causes to vehicles, is that it speeds the cooling process to reach the outside temperature. Not the windchill factor.

 

I was thinking of installing a block heater in my 03. Before i did anything i wanted to read up on this forum see what the opinions were.

Found this thread and was wondering if my model had this option. I have an 03 HSE with the heated seats and wndow screen. I checked around my air filter box but couldn't see any plugs. is it directly on the box or somewhere leading into it? Is the plug on the block easy to see so that i could check to see if its there and if so trace the plug back out?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

I dont think that was in the US cold weather package.

 

I figured as much as I just spent 20 min looking for it...Any thoughts on the different types available? not sure I want to mess with a plug...what about the oil dipstick heaters? do they work and are they safe?

 

here you go.

http://www.roverparts.com/Parts/PRC9674G.cfm

aaron 2003 SE7 Disco II 114,000 miles.