Chinese Tractor Owners Association

    Yes, I know, the subject gets rehashed every winter and I am one of those that got involved each of the last 3 winters since I bought a 2008 NT284, but I have been jealous. I have seen posts from folks with newer engines that claim they can start in sub-freezing temps with a couple attempts at glow plugs and compression releases but I've tried everything that works for everyone else and on mine it just doesn't cut it. I installed an 1100W block heater 3 winters ago and have settled for the fact that with 15 minutes of pre-heating I could start in anything. I had also about given up on ever getting any better results than that.

    Well,I couldn't let it lie.  I theorized that it had to be either cold fuel and/or cold air that was the actual root of the problem. Even though glow plugs help, they alone weren't enough. I didn't have the guts to try to pre-heat the fuel. I have however seen posts about some diesels that had a glow plug and fuel injector in the intake manifold to burn just a squirt of fuel to quickly pre-heat the intake. So, I took my wife's hair dryer and hooked it to an unused port on the intake manifold! Unconventional I admit, but I figured it couldn't hurt anything to at least try. Well, it actually works pretty good!! I turn the hair dryer on, give it about 10 seconds to warm up, crank the engine with compression released till I get oil pressure, hit the glow plugs for about 30 seconds, and in 20 degree temperatures it fired right up after about 10 seconds of cranking.

    So how do I feel about having a hair dryer under my hood connected to the intake using a lower radiator hose from a '92 Ford Taurus?  I am looking at better ideas. I want something I can quick connect so I don't have the hair dryer under the hood for the whole season. I am thinking about a small tube permanently welded to the flange that connects the big hose from the air cleaner to the intake manifold. The tube would come out to the side of the cowling and would be the right size, about 1/2" maybe,  that I could just slip the nozzle of a heat gun or de-soldering gun into it while starting and then remove the heater and cap the pipe while running. I also though of a heating element of some sort mounted in the intake, but I would worry that if the element deteriorated or broke loose that I would be dumping debris right into the intake manifold and I don't want to take that risk.

    Has anyone seen commercially available devices for heating intake air to small diesels?

Grumpy

What happens if you can't start a generator when it's cold? What if the power goes out when you're sleeping and it's cold? If you have an inverter that will power the hair dryer, and you have proven to yourself that the hair dryer does the trick, but your concern is that the hair dryer draws down the tractor battery too fast, then a deep cycle battery dedicated just for the hair dryer and kept next to the tractor with a constant trickle charge to power the inverter might be the ticket.

     I am very proud of my daughter. She's just like her old man! When she was about 12 years old she won a local Rube Goldberg contest!

     Biggerten gets it. What if the power goes out when I'm sleeping and it's cold, which 4 out of 5 times is exactly when we loose our power? Yes, I have an inverter that will power the hair dryer, and have proven to myself that the hair dryer does the trick, but my concern is that the hair dryer draws down the tractor battery too fast. I guess a deep cycle battery dedicated just for the hair dryer and kept next to the tractor with a constant trickle charge might be the ticket.

     Of course, for me, 60% of the benefit of designing an implement or a mod is the fun I have designing it! The place where I work was testing various heat guns for desoldering electronics components. They had a couple models they didn't like and I managed to obtain, free of cost, a variable temperature one that I can dial down to about 200 degrees and only draws maybe 10 or 20A from the tractor battery through the power inverter. This is a step forward, but I still would like something permanently mounted that runs off 12VDC, less wiring, don't have to remove it for the summer, more efficient, doesn't look like someone plumbed a hair dryer into their intake. I am now looking at a Thermostart #C5NE9A436A Intake heater used on a lot of Ford and Massey Ferguson tractors. From what I can see online it looks like it will probably mount right into that spare port on the side of the elbow above my intake manifold. By the way, I said earlier that I guessed that port to be threaded about 1" NPT. Bad guess, looks more like a 7/8" straight NF thread, which just happens to be the thread on the C5NE9A436A. The disadvantage to the C5NE9A436A is that it is one of those that gets fed diesel fuel. It vaporizes then ignites the diesel fuel to generate heat. These only cost about $20 and I have a MF dealer near where I work. I'm going to pick one up Monday after work and play with that for a few days!  

    Well, I've settled on my final solution. First of all, although my goal is that of the ability to start at 0F without assistance from the local power grid, I will continue to use the 1100W block heater when I don't mind waiting 15 minutes. This is in agreement with Bob's post stating that 'starting an ice cold engine' is not really prefered unless necessary. I do not intend to start without preheating on a regular basis, I just want to be completely confident that I can if I need to.

    I played around with the Thermostart idea used on a lot of Ford, Kubota, JD, and Massey tractors. Although the device worked as advertised on a test bench, I ran into a couple issues when trying to apply it to my Jinma 284. First issue was that the things require a small reservouir of diesel fuel at least 4" above the device. That was hard to achieve using the existing location of the side port on the elbow above the intake manifold on mine. There is only about 6" or 8" from there to the inside of the hood. I did not wish to go so far as to remove the intake manifold and create a new port just for this which would have been lower and probably more effective. Another issue was that, when mounted in the port on the Jinma, the thing is pretty much encased in a pipe that isn't much larger in diameter that the device itself. It didn't want to light up nearly as easily as it did out in the open, I think maybe it needs more room to breathe. I also read a post where someone suggested, what seems logical to me, that burning diesel fuel inside the intake to heat up the air also consumes the oxygen! I gave up on the Thermostart device.    
    I went back to the hair dryer/ heat gun idea. The hair dryer was overkill. There is a threaded fitting in the intake manifold for connection to the crankcase ventilation breather hose from the valve cover. I replaced it with a hose barb that has an ID large enough to accept my heat gun with a little attachment stuck on it's nose that focusses the heat into a 3/8" diameter stream. In the event that I ever need to start without pre-heating I can pull off the PCV hose, slip the nose of the heat gun into that barb, dial the heat gun back to 220 degrees so I don't hurt anything, plug it into the power inverter mounted above my head to the underside of the canopy, run the heat gun for 30 seconds, crank the engine with compression released to get some hot air into the cylinders and get the oil pressure up, let the heat gun run another 30 seconds, and fire it up. It works really good. Not as convenient as having all the pieces permanently mounted to the tractor, but it should do very well for the few times I will ever have to use it.  

    Well, I thought this story was over till Phillip stated again what I have heard several times in related posts over the past couple years and always dismissed, 'did you check your glow plugs?'. I will say that I have read that 'the glow plugs should draw about 30A cold and taper off to about 15 as they heat up'. My tractor did that from the day it was delivered, and stil does that today, so I assumed what they meant was all 3 plugs together draw 30A. A couple years ago I put a heavy duty relay in the path to make sure the plugs were getting all the current they wanted and simply concluded that the plugs do help with temperatures in the 50s and 60s but simply weren't enough below freezing. Well, thank you Phillip for finally getting me to do what I should've done years ago.  Resistance tests show that 2 of my 3 glow plugs are dead and probably have been since I got the thing. Just to be sure, I disconnected the 2 suspect plugs and with just the one known good plug connected I hit the pre-heat position on the ignition switch and got the same current draw I have always had, 30A for a second or 2 then tapering off to about 15. I will be ordering new glow plugs later today.

    This brings up a question though, how the heck did Jinma ever expect to supply current through a 30A fuse, an ignition switch, and a skinny wire to 3 plugs that should probably draw 80A or 90A altogether when cold? I think I understand, the skinny wire was a current limiter!

10F degrees, cranked it with compression released till I got oil pressure, gave it 30 seconds on the glow plugs just to be nice, fired right up. Grumpy is a happy camper!