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Date:         Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:29:51 -0800
Reply-To:     Scott Daniel - Shazam <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Scott Daniel - Shazam <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject:      Re: Retrofit Electric Pumps and a 110V pre-heat circulating system
Comments: To: Jake de Villiers <crescentbeachguitar@GMAIL.COM>
In-Reply-To:  <71d9cdf90802191004l26e12a9dsf5cdc322a6866dd2@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

There are electric water pumps that go right in the main coolant hoses. Marine applications. I removed one from a subaru engine conversion vanagon once. It was used as a boost pump in addition to the timing belt driven water pump on the engine.

Drag racing is somewhat of a special application. Top Fuel dragsters have no cooling system of any kind I believe.

As for after run cooling..........it doesn't seem to hurt engines that they just get shut off hot.........and the temp actually goes up in the engine at first for a few minutes.

I very much like the idea of heating the coolant with house 110V and circulating it via an electric pump ( either 110VAC or 12vdc ) and then running a heater fan at low speed. Do that for half an hour on a below freezing day and you could hop into a vanagon with 60 degrees or so interior temp to start with, and defrosted windshield, before you even start the engine or burn any gas. Your energy would come from the electric company of course, but I suspect the increase in your monthly bill would be very small.

As Jim pointed out, this has a quite significant advantage of both reduced wear on the engine, as it's starting fairly warmed up, and increase fuel economy slightly, again because the engine starts out from a pretty warmed up state.

Car manufacturers ( Saab ) have even experimented with large heat sinks, to store heat energy from the last time the car was run, so that on the next cold start, they can have it in closed loop within a very short time period, to reduce emissions on a cold start up. That's the very worst situation from an emissions view point - cold start up and the first several minutes of operation until things are up to temp. It's worth it to do a lot to be able to get the engine from stone cold ( or never stone cold in the first place ! ......like with this 110volt AC system ) to warmed up as quickly as possible. Now *That* I think is very worth investing in - in terms of fuel economy too. And it depends on how long and how often your drive cycles are too of course. If all you ever do is start and drive for 3 hours once a day, you are only spending a tiny portion of the time or miles not warmed up. But if you do as so many people do, start it a few times a day, and go for say 10 or 20 minutes drives, then both engine wear and fuel mileage suffer due to being in that bad 'first few minutes' a bigger percentage of the time.

I would even predict............for someone doing medium short drive cycles, say drive one way to work in the AM, and one way back at night, with about say 10 miles for each drive, if they could keep the van plugged in and the coolant warm and circulating when the van is off, there's 2 mpg to be realized there. Depending on length and frequency of drive cycles, and on time of year of course. In very cold winter temps the benefit would be significant for short drive cycles. Less so in summer. By golly, I'm sitting in my 'new' AW right now on shore power, there's one of those circulating water pumps on that dead Canadian model diesel vanagon sitting over there, and a block heater, and I've been saving a waterboxer block heater that just bolts to the bottom of a wbxr engine ........and I've got a 12v power supply or two for running the heater fan...............by jove, if I find time, next winter I'll be starting all my local driving with a warm cabin and almost warmed up engine, off of shore power, which is included in my rent anyway !! Or even before this winter is over ! I think I can get the basic parts in pretty easily and quickly.

I just *can not* wait to work on this ! Very doable, and 110VAC from 'The Man' is abundant, and I even have all the parts already. Once the vision is in place, the rest is easy - it's just filling in the steps. You guys work on the electric water pump idea.

I'll work on this, and I'm pretty sure the system I'm talking about here will increase winter time short driving cycle fuel mileage, reduce engine wear, and I'll be starting out with a clear windshield and a warm cabin. Hot damn ! - and possibly a 2 mpg improvement for 'winter time short driving cycle' operation.

Now 'that' is what I call a "Shazam" ! Scott www.turbovans.com thanks for helping getting me inspired on this ! biggest hassle with be plugging and unplugging the 110V cord from the barn. But it'll be worth it.


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