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Detroit cold weather starting

Started by madmari, December 10, 2010, 04:27:10 PM

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Ken

Our experience is that most machines will start to -20 C (-3 or so F) if they have good batteries and a full fuel tank.  We do have block heaters on the skidders and take the generator when required.  However we are often farther ahead to just stay home when it is any colder.  Too many things can break on those days when steel is more brittle due to the cold.   We've also noticed that it makes a tremendous difference to park the machines out of the wind. 
Lots of toys for working in the bush

Frank H.

I like to use the generator/block heater for about 20 min, and pull the air filter and have the propane torch by (not stuck in) the intake air stream.  The worn little 3-53 starts every time.  I'd like to try to make one of those cummins grid heaters work on the intake one of these days.

barbender

The Cummins intake heaters are very effective. My Dodge has sat for days and started at -15°F if I let the heater cycle a couple of times. I don't make a habit of that, I'm sure it's not good for the engine as the oil pressure takes a good 60 seconds to come up. But it will start, where I have an identical 5.9 cummins at work in a Ford 2 ton, it doesn't have an intake heater and is a pig to start. Anything below 30 and it's a fight.
Too many irons in the fire

Bobus2003

I know of a few guys that have used Dodge Grid Heaters, or the Ford Powerstroke Intake Air Heater (Its a Screw in type, Looks kinda like a spark plug) on their skidders.. The grid heater is by far the best

poor farmer/logger

Bit late on posting but thought I'd throw my 2 cents in anyways. We're just about always working with temps below 0F here in the winter. We've used a little bit of everything over the years. A few years ago we put a webasto heater on our volvo loader. Worked great for the first year then nothing but problems since. Even the service manager where we bought it told us afterwards they have no end to the problems with them. Pro Heat and Espar make a simialr unit as well. They usually run around the 1,000 dollar mark. 7 day timer is usually another 250 more. We used to have a hockey stick heater in the skidder and on the sawmill. It's a burner that looks like a hockey stick that slides into it's house with coolant circulating threw it. Totatlly self contained but of course there's always a chance of fire. After that we had a propan heater with a blower that we aimed in at the engine on the starter side of the skidder. Worked okay but now we have another propane self contained unit that works extremely well. It's from a company in Ontario called E F Heaters. It's got a propane burner that slides in the bottom of a coil. It just goes off the idea that hot water rises. Hot  water goes in the bottom of the engine and pushes the cold back out the top threw the heater again. I'm going to add a 12 volt pump to it though to make it even faster for my D7 Cat. Flame is away from the equipment so I consider it safer that way. Anything that is at home we usually just plug in with a block heater. If it's real cold it gets pluged in as soon as it's shut off.

I too have never been a fan of puttign the cold coolant into a warm engine. Our newer  Dodge Cummins it would never work anyways. You can't get them to warm up when it's cold anyways.

Ryan

timbuck2

My TJ 208E has a regular plug in block heater, I use a little 2K watt Honda gen., takes about an hour tho.   But most of the time I keep it in the garage tucked in with a binkie!

Ed_K

The home tractor has a heat tape wrapped around the bottom radiator hose and plugged into the box on the deck.It's worked all winter an cost me $6.I would like to try it on the skidder w/small gen,but think it would take to long.
Ed K

redneck

i have a 208 timberjack 353 detroit and i use a small 2500 watt gen.  I plug in the block heater, plug in a small battery charger, and put the coleman generator between the tire and engine so that the exhaust heats up the fuel pump and top of engine.  It takes about 45min to one hour.  Sometimes brought in a third 1000amp battery  that i can hook up with booster cables to the starter or other batteries.  While waiting i go a cut some trees.
208 timberjack 353 detroit, case 580 super K backhoe, homemade bandmill, 357xp, 372xpg

Ed_K

At this point,if the skidder won't start I'm NOT walking into the bush to cut a tree  ;D :o :( .I think by tomorrow night the snow will be hip high  >:( .
Ed K

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