Any trouble with Winter diesel starting?

[Surf44]

Originally Posted by PNW_Steve

The coolant heater will provide engine preheat as well as interior radiant heat and hot air.

Regarding battery use, mine will run from the house batteries so no worries about running the starting battery down.

Do you keep your ignition on or did you rewire the vent fans into your house batteries so you dont have to leave the ignition on?

How long do you run it for? I feel like it would draw quite a bit running over night right?

[PNW_Steve]

Originally Posted by Surf44

Do you keep your ignition on or did you rewire the vent fans into your house batteries so you dont have to leave the ignition on?

How long do you run it for? I feel like it would draw quite a bit running over night right?

House batteries.

You can manually turn it on or use a timer.

I have power available to plug in this winter so I am not currently using it.

[Surf44]

Nice yea that seems like the route to go, better start saving now! Thanks a lot for all the replies.

[Napabavarian]

My 2006 duramax doesn't even flinch starting at 0°, this isn't your grandfather's diesel. I came across a YouTube video of a guy with a cummins who unplugged the grid heater at some absurd negative temperature just to prove a point. It started after quite a bit of cranking, blew an atomic cloud of black smoke idling along on 2.5 cylinders until it warmed up a bit, but it went, with the heater it shouldn't be an issue unless you are in some seriously negative temps.

Originally Posted by Booyah45828

A 6.6L duramax will start at near zero degrees fahrenheit with good batteries and starter. No need to plug it in unless you want easier starting and instant cab heat.

The 7.3 won't do it nearly as cold because of the heui injection system.

Any diesel will need to have the correct additives dumped in the tank to prevent fuel gel and waxing from occurring.

Cold is a relative term, what's the temperature you're actually going to be seeing?

Gas engines can have just as much trouble starting when below freezing as a diesel engine. Flood one of those out and you'll be stuck pulling plugs in a van(no fun).

If you want in cab heat, those webasto heaters work great at making it. But as said previously, they are expensive.

[cowlitzcoach]

Espar and Webasto fuel fired coolant heaters have a pump the circulates the heated coolant so it travels throughout the coolant loop. That includes the underseat and front heater and defroster cores.


To run the fuel fired coolant heaters requires a fairly large battery reserve to operate. If you are using them to heat the interior by running the heater/defroster fans you will be using a lot more juice. With everything running you could be using up the better part of 100 AMPS.



I think running a genset would be a much better way to do what you want to do. If the genset is water cooled you can use the bus coolant loop and radiator to keep the genset cooled which will put some heat into the coolant loop which will provide some heat into the body of the bus.



If the bus has a good electric engine heater (most good ones run about 1500 watts) it should, with convection, get the engine up to a temperature that will make starting relatively easy. Some of the more expensive engine heaters have a smaller heating element that is supplemented by a coolant pump to move the warmed coolant around the coolant loop faster than convection would move the heat.


Personally I like the genset idea better because it can be used to run A/C when it gets hot.


Personally what I don't like about the fuel fired coolant heaters is they have a nasty habit of burning buses down. If the burner unit isn't serviced correctly and on schedule they do start to have problems. Low battery voltage can also cause some issues.