Living in Alberta Canada its not uncommon to get temps as low as or lower then -40C (thats -40F too), so I was wondering if anyone had experience with adding on an additional oil pan heater for these cold temps. I'm thinking this would help with starting and help with the time it takes for the engine to warm up.
Oil pan heater - for us "northerners"
- Thread starter hulzenga
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Stuck CAPS
New member
Cold air... With the engine warmed up, you get a nice power gain!
In all seriousness, could you just use something "universal"? I know, from when I go over there, in Germany, there's a lot of diesel vehicles, and when it gets cold, they use heaters for the block and the oil pans, so I feel like something else could fit.EDIT: Here's something I found... It says it should fit most V6 and smallblock V8 blocks.
RunnerAK
New member
I've got several heaters that I'll be adding to "winterize" our 4Runners when I ge a chance, probably next weekend. I've got the block heaters for both and will be adding heating pads to the oil pans and batteries as well. I'll try to take pictures and do a quick writeup if I have time.
This setup (block, battery, oil pan) worked well on my other vehicles when I lived in Fairbanks, AK where it would regularly get down to -40°F/C in the winter. I wanted to add heating pads to the transmission pans of the 4runners too, but after crawling down there and looking at it, the pan has ridges that might prevent a good bond with the pad.
I bought Kat's brand heating pads from Amazon, they were 1/3 the cost of the Proheat or Wolverine branded ones and work just the same.
This setup (block, battery, oil pan) worked well on my other vehicles when I lived in Fairbanks, AK where it would regularly get down to -40°F/C in the winter. I wanted to add heating pads to the transmission pans of the 4runners too, but after crawling down there and looking at it, the pan has ridges that might prevent a good bond with the pad.
I bought Kat's brand heating pads from Amazon, they were 1/3 the cost of the Proheat or Wolverine branded ones and work just the same.
I run a block heater, oil pan heater, trans pan heater, battery heater and a battery trickle charger. The pan heaters are held on with high temp RTv and aluminum furnace tape. With all the heaters the truck warms up rather quickly even at 50 below. It's a relatively cheep mod but we'll worth it.
I was thinking of something for the battery as well, any chance of any pictures? and RunnerAK that would be an awesome write-up, I'm going to look into this more.
RunninUte, how do you power that all up? haha sounds like a lot of heating going on! But I suppose thats what you got to do for the alaskan winters.
RunninUte, how do you power that all up? haha sounds like a lot of heating going on! But I suppose thats what you got to do for the alaskan winters.
CHawks_12
New member
I lived in Fairbanks for 8 years and this past winter I would say was the coldest in a while. We had a week of at least -60F. I have moved this past summer to the military but I had a transmission pad, 2 oil pan pads and a battery pad. They all were just the stick on and they worked great never had an issue starting my 4R. Just used the red RTV to stick them onand off I went. I used a 4 plug recepticle to plug them all in.
CHawks_12
New member
RunninUte is 10 minutes from where I lived in North Pole. They have plug ins everywhere on post at Eielson and Wainwright.
Man I miss AK!! Beautful up there.
