Dont Forget To Warm Up Those Diesels With Block Heaters

Summer is gone and Winter is finally upon us. Depending on where you live in the lower 48 you may need to add a block heater to your truck. These are great devices and can be added to trucks and even cars. I have personally owned both trucks & cars from up north & out west that had block heaters and they do work and do not take much effort to install. Here in the South you rarely see them, but there is a call for them from time to time and could save people trucks and help with warming up trucks engines.

A block heater warms an engine and oil to increase the chances that the engine will start as well as warm up the vehicle faster than it normally would in extremely cold weather. The most common type is an electric heating element in the cylinder block, connected through a power cord often routed through the vehicle's grille.

One thing that you could consider, while small, is the fact that the cold start will be coming back in full swing. There’s something just so unique about hearing an engine fire up from a completely cold state as it’s left to sit overnight, becoming one with the ambient temperature that might get in the teens or even lower. When the temperature does drop this low, it generally calls for a different cold starting scenario than you would normally see during the summer. This phenomenon is especially true with diesel trucks because, as you will find, these trucks don’t really agree with the cold weather as much when they tend to throw a fit sometimes.

Check out the videos below that shows a collection of cold starts that has the trucks huffing and puffing, trying to get a little bit of heat into that air and fuel mixture to make them come alive and have these diesel-powered machines breathing life once again. I’m not sure if it’s the smoke or the sound or some mix of other factors but watching cold start videos like this is oh so satisfying. Personally, I could sit here and watch these videos for hours.