Block heater/cord setup (1 Viewer)

[IdahoDoug]

I was just plugging the 80 in for the first time tonight and thought some of you fellow northerners might be interested in the setup.

I put a factory Toyota block heater in it 7 years ago or so. The cord runs out the grille. I use a 15 foot extension cord to power it, which is plugged into one of those cheap vacation lamp timers so it starts to warm up an hour before morning startup. From the timer/wall plug, the cord runs to the car, but I've got a block of wood 3 feet before the car that's painted international orange. It's stapled to the cord with one of those large staples. The block of wood has a slot cut into it, so it can be perched on the rear edge of the bug shield.

In practise, you walk into the garage and can't miss the bright orange block indicating the truck's plugged in. If you are so braindead that you do miss it, when you're in the driver's seat you again can't miss it perched straight ahead of you. I'm sure the timer has paid for it's $5 cost many times over by not having the heater on all night. When traveling in winter, I toss the cord in the truck as a lot of motels provide plug ins for block heaters.

So far, this has worked well for 7 years and nobody's managed to back out of the garage while plugged in.

Doug

 

[cruiserdan]

Doug,

You've just jinxed yerself Ya dough head. :whoops:

 

[landtoy80]

That a good idea. I plug the semi in at night. I wounder how long it needs to be on to heat up the Cat C12?

 

[CDN_Cruiser]

When my wife and I lived in the arctic, we used to have to plug in for ~3-4hours - block heater, oil pan heater and dual battery blankets (BJ60)! Lots of fun. -40 really sucked in that truck.

When we were away from town we carried a 'tiger torch', propane and a length of stove pipe with a 90* bend to heat the engine if needed!

Cheers, Hugh