[Boots]

Ah good - glad it's not just me!

Must be nice to have the room to do the mods you mentioned...

I think I'll give the 'glow plug tips poking into a pipe' idea a try then. I think this combined with changing to the electric cooling fan will make enough of a difference for the weather conditions we experience over here.

There will still be some airflow past the block due to roadspeed but it won't be anything like as much as there is now with the loony viscous fan.

It wont be cheap to have the glow plug block machined up but shouldn't be too bad if I can find a suitable blank stainless box to start from. That way, the machine shop would only have to drill and tap the glow plug holes and a couple for the hose unions rather than milling out the cavity for the water flow.

Putting the unit in the feed pipe to the heater matrix should mean that I get the benefit of the hotter water straight away for defrosting the windscreen/fingers. The added heat input should help warm the motor up a bit quicker too. (Not sure the battery/alternator are going to love this plan but they'll just have to put up with it!)

After doing some calculations, I think 6 plugs would be better than 4. I only have 12v available and I think each plug should draw about 10A or so.

Thus with 6 plugs: (12 x 10) x 6 = 720 watts of heating.

This won't make a quick or big dent in 10 litres of coolant but it should be enough to make a difference.

I don't have any experience of using standard plugs to heat liquid and they would almost certainly suffer if the water flow was stopped for some reason but I think they should run pretty cool if the flow is maintained.

Sealing and corrosion wise, if they can withstand combustion pressures they shouldn't leak at cooling system pressures and the anti-corrosion stuff in the antifreeze should mean they won't rust etc.

If I get it all working, I'll post the project up...

Boots.