Bring on the cold frosty mornings !!!

[Td-eye]

I've just fitted a Kenlowe Hotstart and I know that SWMBO at least, is very much looking forward to instant heating on cold frosty winter mornings from now on !

I got this unit secondhand on ebay (£65) & fitting it to SWMBO's Fabia today was fairly straight forward once I managed to fabricate an insulated bracket to enable mounting beside the airbox which is about the only space available. Two metres of 16mm heater hose, half a dozen jubilee clips, a couple of straight connectors and a few cable ties soon had it plumbed in to the cooling system.

The electrical connection is supplied by way of a "caravan hook up" type plug and I decided to mount this to the very rear of SWMBO's car as she always reverses the car into the garage where it will be connected to the mains via a timer but I just know that one day she is going to drive off forgetting to unplug it !

By doing it this way the plug just pulls out of the back of the car (I know because I've tested it) as you drive off.

The Hotstart unit heats the 1.9Tdi lump to normal operating temperature in about 20 mins (3Kw) and has an inbuilt pump that continually circulates the heated water around the vehicle's cooling system and the thermostat in the unit holds the temperature to 80C.

Anyone contemplating doing this job with a reasonable degree of ability should find it a fairly straightforward DIY task.

Between this and the heated seats SWMBO should now be nice and warm in her Fabia on the short commute to work (previously the engine never really got a chance to warm up) while I freeze my @ss off on my daily commute by motorcycle !

Ah well, that's another wee mod done and I'm sure that as well as keeping SWMBO warm the benefits in terms of less engine wear and improved fuel economy will be a bonus !

[WW_VRS]

If you have a chance to take some snaps that would be great, I've been toying with the idea of fitting something like this for ages (although I cant use the electric one, I'd have to have a diesel powered one due to not having garage + no way of guaranteeing I can get near mains :( )

[Tom_vRS]

WW - if you come up with a diesel powered option be sure to let us all know.

Don't posh Audis with PD lumps come with pre-heaters or the like?

[bryand]

One of our Finnish members had an Eberspacher diesel heater on his Fabia vRS. It was a dealer-fit option in Finland, and the unit itself was installed between the radiator and the front crash bar.

Handy because you take it with you wherever you go (independant of mains power) but it's additional weight up front.

[WW_VRS]

Yeah I looked into Eberspacher a while ago, they are diesel powered - the only catch in my car is that I've got a FMIC which takes up the natural fitting position IIRC, once my car is back in decent shape I'll have to find a dealer, Eberspacher doesn't deal with consumers direct unfortunately.

Must admit it is a very nice thing to have, better for your engine too

[Td-eye]

If you have a chance to take some snaps that would be great,

Hmm, it might be difficult to see very much under the bonnet as the unit is mounted down under the turbo intake pipe but I'll see if I can get some pictures this afternoon as SWMBO's away Christmas shopping in her car this morning.

[Td-eye]

Ok a couple of pictures, doesn't show too much unfortunately but you get the idea.

This one shows the bracket holding the Kenlowe Heater Unit mounted to the side of the Airbox. It's an L shaped bracket fabricated from alloy and because the heater gets quite hot I left a gap (arrowed) between the unit and the airbox and insulated the unit from the bracket by sitting it on a piece of wood (arrowed) placed between the bracket and the unit body. Having checked when the heater was running (and it does get quite hot) there's virtually no heat transfer to the airbox.

It's a tight fit but it's all in and it doesn't foul anything.

The cable you see to the front of the unit is the power feed that I've run all the way to the back of the car.

This picture shows where I coupled the heater into the cars cooling system using some lengths of 16mm heater pipe held in place by cable ties and run to and from the heater unit.

One thing I would say is that if you're thinking of buying a secondhand Kenlowe heater unit like I did, they are prone to the pump siezing up if they have been sitting out of the car & not been run for a while or if left to dry out. Mine was siezed when I got it (a fact almost certainly unknown to the seller) but it's a fairly simple task to take it apart and free it off. The problem lies in the pump motor shaft which tends to sieze in it's bearing when it dries out but it's simple enough to fix by removing and cleaning up the shaft. It's always a good idea to bench test it first to see if it works before fitting it, get it to heat up a pail of water.

Anyway, SWMBO tells me the heater had done it's job this morning when she went shopping & the car was nice & hot from the word go !

[ScoobyChris]

WW - if you come up with a diesel powered option be sure to let us all know.

Doesn't you TDCI get hot quickly? Mine is lovely and toasty after a minute or so ... maybe mine has a preheater :confused:

Chris

[pixi]

Mine only takes about 5 minutes to get up to temperature. Until then I put my hands under my legs to my heated seats

[cheezemonkhai]

You know yours has a preheater chris :P

[Td-eye]

WW - if you come up with a diesel powered option be sure to let us all know.

Now THIS looks very interesting and I suspect more like the sort of thing you guys without access to mains power should be looking at as a pre-heater.

It's currently a bargain price at just over £200 (bet that changes) and given that it's apparantly over £1000 for one of these fitted, if you're into interesting projects & serious about a pre-heater this could be something of a bargain ?

[chris_newell41]

heated seats.....always warm on a cold frosty morning. love em