You mean this bit i have just welded up. I did see a repair panel somewhere but it was £170 ish and i didn't want to wait for it.

The picture below shows the two pipes which connect to the heater matrix. The red arrow points to the pipe from the cylinder head to the heater matrix and the green arrow is the return pipe from the heater matrix to the water pump. You need to connect the block heater in the return...

Was me last week. Spent about 15 minutes trying to leaver my palls jammed rear door handle down before realising that the Land Rover badge comes out giving access to just push it down.

You shouldn't need a bypass hose, no need to heat the water in the radiator, its just a waste of electricity. The block heater thermostat should be set below the car thermostat so it doesn't open when pre heating and once the engine is running it will still take a few minutes to get up to full...

I think it could go either along side the air box or possibly between the break servo and expansions tank. Failing that there is always the second battery tray if it is not occupied (mine is free). I would like to keep the pipe runs as short as I can and keep it out of direct air flow when the...

I have been making biodiesel for nearly five years and its not quite as simple as people have said but still very worthwhile. You have to be very aware of the dangers (methanol fumes will make you go blind, mad then dead and sodium hydroxide will burn right threw you) and build a processor...

I have never had a core plug out of my landy but I lost one on my transit a while ago and from what I can remember there wasn’t much depth to be able to fit a heater. The landy might have loads of room but its worth checking first. I don’t think a core plug heater at 600w will soot me for what...

The calculation for forced air heat transfer is quite long but I have had a go at working back the way to get the heat dissipation of the main radiator for comparison. if a 300 TDi engine has 111 bhp that is about 80kw the radiator has to be able to displace all the heat generated by the...

As I said its not the same thing. Forced air makes all the difference

And you don't know your arse from your elbow! A house radiator is not the same as a heater matrix or a car radiator. A heater matrix probably has close to 2 square meters of surface area including all the aluminium fins between the plates, has water taken from the hottest part of the engine...

That's defiantly doable but I think they are only about 2kw so would need a longer preheat but it would reduce your power requirements. I am having trouble finding waterproof connectors which can take the full 3kw which aren't absolutely huge. I have seen some nice small 10A connectors...

Maybe 60,000 btu is a bit optimistic, its just what kept coming up when I googled for car heater output. Could be close for a discovery but maybe more like 6000 for your series 3!

As long as its below the minimum level mark in the expansion tank it will bleed threw.

Using a simple heat loss calculation which is meant for horizontal pipes but will be close enough for our purposes since our block heater is really just a short piece of un-insulated horizontal pipe when it is switched off. Heat loss Q = h A ∆T in BTU/hr Where h is the coefficient...

The heat loss from the block heater will be very small compared to that of the heater matrix. Maybe 5% at most but there would be no harm in insulating it. I might do the maths and actually get a figure for it.

the water will flow along the path of least resistance most but will flow to an extent in every direction and the same will happen with the block heater pump running so you will have no control of where the heat goes.

You want to connect the block heater in the return hose from the heater matrix with the flow going back in to the heater. The opposite way from how it would normal flow. This way when the block heater is running it will pump threw the heater matrix giving you heat inside the car if you need...

Ye, I get around a bit.

I would advise strongly against using any kind of plastic container to house an immersion heater element! If the water level was to drop the element would melt threw the plastic and anything else nearby in your engine bay. If it is housed in metal it would still get very hot but eventually the...

I am not so worked about either my van or disco starting its the getting in to a warmed up ready defrosted car I'm looking forward to. I live only 10 minutes from my work and I am just getting heat as I park my van at work at the moment.