any caterpillar techs on here?

[freeflorider]

Could you install a traditional block heater? If time isn’t a big deal a small gen set plug it in and wait an hour. Not sure what kinda cold your dealing with.

 

[ippielb]

Could you install a traditional block heater? If time isn’t a big deal a small gen set plug it in and wait an hour. Not sure what kinda cold you’re dealing with.

The traditional block heater port is right beside the lower hose for the circulatory one. Threads into the oil cooler. Which is still almost impossible to get to due to the ROPS support and hydrostatic tank.

I had thought about running a genset but the hour of clearing I could get done extra every day when I’m on a job for two weeks at a time I’m end up having to add a whole extra day of clearing.

The weather has really screwed me over this year, early snow and frost put a hold on my ditching job, waited and waited but weather never cleared and broke like weather network kept saying would happen the next day. So that set me back, then it just got above zero for a few days and then +7 for two days, and poured over a half inch of rain on everything. And then it just snowed 6-8” on top of the wet thawed out ground on Monday night. So clearing this year is going to be slower with the mud, dry dirt is way easier to segregate from the roots and stumps then mud.

 

[SUMMIT TREE]

Crazy alternative idea. Since I was just seeing these on Vevor website at like $150, cheap like borche.

Use a cheap chinese diesel fired heater just blowing warm air into the engine bay with a tarp over it.
Like not built in , just set there for overnight kinda thing. You set it up at night, and it just runs till morning. May even be able to set it on a timer somehow maybe? Not sure.

 

[ippielb]

Crazy alternative idea. Since I was just seeing these on Vevor website at like $150, cheap like borche.

Use a cheap chinese diesel fired heater just blowing warm air into the engine bay with a tarp over it.
Like not built in , just set there for overnight kinda thing. You set it up at night, and it just runs till morning. May even be able to set it on a timer somehow maybe? Not sure.

Uncle wieners is where I got mine. That’s what this one is, is a diesel air heater. I mounted the EGR cooler off my duramax to act as a coolant heater. The version I got has the 4 smaller outputs that I’ll be routing the hot air to be blowing on the hydrostatic pumps since they both turn when the engine is spinning It’s direct coupled. The other two will go to the engine block/into the cabin. The controller has a timer which is why I was hoping to get it working so I can get it to turn on at like 3am and run for 4 hours before I go fire it up. Instead of just wasting fuel. Even though it doesn’t even burn 1l an hour.

I’m at the point for this winter I might just hook the coolant lines up to the heater core. The lines are directly above the heater. So it can heat the heater core and whatever extra heat the lines have can work it’s way down into the block.

 

[cattechsummitrider]

What I have had to do when I worked up north and a customer ( in the middle of January) needed a wabasto installed I would t into the heater lines and put 2 ball valves in the lines one on the heater core line after the wabasto t so it would only circulate through the block and one ball valve on the wabasto output line so that when the machine is running it will not circulate the coolant just through the wabasto and not the heater,,,, I was quick and it worked and I didnt have to freeze my hands off for long periods of time,,, Had to do this on a lot of equipment that people didn't think they would need.... LOL

 

[ippielb]

What I have had to do when I worked up north and a customer ( in the middle of January) needed a wabasto installed I would t into the heater lines and put 2 ball valves in the lines one on the heater core line after the wabasto t so it would only circulate through the block and one ball valve on the wabasto output line so that when the machine is running it will not circulate the coolant just through the wabasto and not the heater,,,, I was quick and it worked and I didnt have to freeze my hands off for long periods of time,,, Had to do this on a lot of equipment that people didn't think they would need.... LOL

That sounds like a decent idea, but I’m afraid no water pump on my unit, and both of the lines for heater core are at the same level so I don’t think it would be very productive. Just convection will be causing the circulation. I was going to install 2 T’s into the heater core line so that the water pump will still have a direct line for the coolant to go through to the heater core so hopefully it just bypasses the EGR cooler. But then when the diesel heaters going it will still want to pull the coolant from the line before. I guess having a Y would be better.

Weather looks absolutely ridiculous for the next week. Mud city, 4-8 above, tried to clear as much snow as I could on top of soft wet gravel so it didn’t make it even worse. Don’t need a heater if the winter stays this warm. But perfect opportunity to try and finish the heater install.

 

[ippielb]

Well, I decided to just hook up the coolant lines so the EGR cooler I have is directly in line. Put a temporary water bottle filled with diesel as the fuel source.

The kit came with two extendable hoses for the hot air output. I have one pointed at each hydrostatic pump, the other two are just left open for now because that’s all they gave was 2 pieces of pipe. The air that comes out isn’t even really that hot.

The exhaust that comes out is WAY hotter than the hot air. The EGR cooler gets very hot, and the water in the hose going up to the heater core may burn you if you got it on you for too long.

Seems weird that the water going into the heater core is that hot, but the return line for the heater core is still cold. Do you think the heater core would dissipate the heat that much that the water leaving wouldn’t even be warm at all?

I also took off my fuel return line and was going to tie into it for a feed line for the heater but I don’t have the proper fittings or hose. The return line hose is absolutely garbage cracking and deteriorated so I’m going to get a new one made. It’s a JIC fitting with a 90° fitting. But in the hose itself just before the fitting there seems to be a blockage. The air compressor barely blows through it. Is this by design to have a restriction on the return line? Part number 166-1725

Edit:
I probably don’t have my heater control set to maximum hot in the cab. So that valve inside the climate control area is probably barely cracked open. Hence the really hot EGR cooler, and the heater hose pre heater core. Just thought of this now

 

[ippielb]

View attachment 275494Heres a decent pic of a heater install. Most should have these same ports. Probably 1/2” NPT. So in these pics I assume they put a 1/2 to 1” swedge to use larger hose.

If anyone finds this thread looking to put a coolant heater on their 3306, after trying to make the circulatory heater on the heater core lines in both directions, the heater core won’t let the coolant go through. Im assuming the heater valve only gets water through under pressure. There was no reason for it not to go through.

I had to get a few different adaptors to hook my lines up like the picture above. There’s no room to work so I couldn’t get the lower hose hooked up to the larger port that they used. Instead I used the slightly smaller port beside it which I had an adapter for. Then a 90° hose to angle it down and took the heater hose below the engine to the other side to hook it up to my EGR cooler that’s being used as the coolant heater. The hot line goes overtop of the engine along the two heater core lines and then goes into the head at the larger 1/2” NPT plug.

Initially there was an air pocket in the hot line but after bleeding it out the coolant started flowing quite well for the size of the fittings. Shouldn’t take very long to heat the block up. Now to try it when temperatures drop again, I’m just glad I was able to get the main install done while the temperature rose this week.

If anyone has a cheap Chinese diesel air heater in their trailers, you are wasting twice the amount of heat pumping it out of the exhaust. The hot air coming out of the unit is no comparison to the heat I’m getting out of the exhaust using coolant. You can easily rig up a little heat exchanger or oil cooler to radiate heat while using an EGR cooler like I did.

 

[SUMMIT TREE]

Nice ! Good to see you gotter beat.

I always thought that it seemed wasteful to pump hot exhaust outside, so I was going to try to make some sort of heat capture method before the exhaust exited the trailer. Either run it thru a length of corrugated exhaust flex inside another tube with a fan blowing air over it, or something like that to capture as much heat as possible.

 

[ippielb]

Nice ! Good to see you gotter beat.

I always thought that it seemed wasteful to pump hot exhaust outside, so I was going to try to make some sort of heat capture method before the exhaust exited the trailer. Either run it thru a length of corrugated exhaust flex inside another tube with a fan blowing air over it, or something like that to capture as much heat as possible.

I highly recommend the EGR cooler route. You can usually find them cheap if not for free, and they’re very reliable. The exhaust on a diesel heater doesn’t get to the same temperatures as the EGT’s on my truck that’s for sure. 1,300 degrees vs 750 degrees. You can use convection to circulate the coolant up to a radiator or even heat transfer plates on the floor. The only issue with that would be circulating if you went with transfer plates. My only through the on the long exhaust pipes is that it definitely gets hot enough to melt your sled gear, I have my EGR cooler directly below my heater with only 8-10” of exposed exhaust pipe. The EGR cooler body itself (other than the flanges) doesn’t get hot enough to melt your hand let alone your gear.

I wish I had a flir heat camera to be able to see the temperatures and where the heat transfers through the block. I’m going to be carrying around two pairs of flat vice grips with me now so I can pinch the lines if I need to if they leak.

 

[ippielb]

If anyone was curious about the install, this is how it looks. Using an auxiliary battery to power the heater unit since the loader is 24v and the heater is 12v. Solar panel to try and trickle charge it all day. It has a timer on it so it’ll only be on for a few hours a day wonder how long that battery will last. I’ll be putting booster cables on it to try charge the battery every day while I let the loader warm up, and every night while I clean the undercarriage out and fuel up.

 

[cattechsummitrider]

Just hook the wires up to ONE of the batterys on your 24v 2 battery system and you will have 12v

 

[cattechsummitrider]

Good Job!!!
The only thing you might have trouble with is your fuel line might suck air after a while from the top side if your one way valve isn't working perfectly,,,, I've had it happen

 

[ippielb]

Good Job!!!
The only thing you might have trouble with is your fuel line might suck air after a while from the top side if your one way valve isn't working perfectly,,,, I've had it happen

I didn’t want to take any power from the two batteries in series. I didn’t want one battery to drain and get undercharged or the other overcharged. I just bought the batteries two weeks ago.

I ended up buying a deep cycle battery to replace that aux battery I put on.

I will say that the timer system on that diesel air heater is garbage. You set it for how many hour timer you want it to kick on. So I set it for 10 hours, and I show up to the machine the next morning and the heater wasn’t on. The timer still showed 1 hour 57 minutes left on it. And it was over 12 hours after I set the timer. Cheap Chinese junk doesn’t like the -20 weather. The clock kept time though which is frustrating.

 

[cattechsummitrider]

I didn’t want to take any power from the two batteries in series. I didn’t want one battery to drain and get undercharged or the other overcharged. I just bought the batteries two weeks ago.

I ended up buying a deep cycle battery to replace that aux battery I put on.

I will say that the timer system on that diesel air heater is garbage. You set it for how many hour timer you want it to kick on. So I set it for 10 hours, and I show up to the machine the next morning and the heater wasn’t on. The timer still showed 1 hour 57 minutes left on it. And it was over 12 hours after I set the timer. Cheap Chinese junk doesn’t like the -20 weather. The clock kept time though which is frustrating.

Ya
That will tick you off
Check to see if it is getting diesel, because the way it is set up it might get some air, most times you have to run a line right to the diesel tank ,, also check the battery if its low the unit will shut down

You could also pop one of these on
Amazon product ASIN B0875PJ7FK

 

[ippielb]

Ya
That will tick you off
Check to see if it is getting diesel, because the way it is set up it might get some air, most times you have to run a line right to the diesel tank ,, also check the battery if its low the unit will shut down

You could also pop one of these on
Amazon product ASIN B0875PJ7FK

It gave me an E-10 code which is “a combination of errors”

Then it gave me an E-04, which was a fuel pump issue. The fuel pump was stuck so I beat on it with a wrench and then it started ticking.

Low voltage code came up once when I manually started it. So that’s what drove me to put on the deep cycle battery.

someone had mentioned using a solar charge controller. But I wasn’t sure if it could handle the 28v the alternator puts out.

 

[cattechsummitrider]

It gave me an E-10 code which is “a combination of errors”

Then it gave me an E-04, which was a fuel pump issue. The fuel pump was stuck so I beat on it with a wrench and then it started ticking.

Low voltage code came up once when I manually started it. So that’s what drove me to put on the deep cycle battery.

someone had mentioned using a solar charge controller. But I wasn’t sure if it could handle the 28v the alternator puts out.

The fuel pump was stuck so I beat on it with a wrench and then it started ticking.

BEST thing I have read all week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL

 

[cattechsummitrider]

Nice,,,,, sounds like you have a few errors to work through.