Plug-in car heaters

[chinablue777]

Can anyone recommend a decent plug-in heater that actualy works?. A mate of mine told me ceramic ones work the best over a short period of time , but for instant results a blow heater is better. The only ones I have seen are on Amazon , Kelkoo etc but get poor ratings. Any realy good ones out there?

 

[Burnerman]

Do you mean a heater that warms up the car's coolant, or a garage one?
John

 

[wotan]

Do you mean a heater that warms up the car's coolant, or a garage one?
John

I get the impression to warm the car interior to remove condensation from the screen.

Wotan

 

[Burnerman]

Me too - but there's so little space to actually fit one of these things.
The 'blow heater' reference threw me a bit.
John

 

[chinablue777]

Hi there . When I said blow heater I meant the fan type that you can fix on top of the dashboard. The heater matrix has had it and to replace it means removing the complete dashboard , so I am going with the plug in type.

 

[Belle427]

every plug in type ive seen has been rubbish

 

[Burnerman]

Plug in cooling fans, yes - never heard of a plug in heater though.
Maybe caravan shops or similar would stock them.
John

 

[Stivino]

I've seen them. They don't provide much heat though, that'll be due to the limited amount of current it can draw through the cigar lighter socket.
To get any real heat from an electric fan heater in a car, you'd need to connect it straight to the battery with a set of jump leads.
then you'd need an alternator the size of a house to provide the power etc.

 

[spinsmall]

are you petrol or desil?

I know of many people with eberspacher heaters they work like a dream

http://www.eberspacher.com/

 

[chinablue777]

Hi there Spinsmall and thank you for your reply. It is petrol. I must admit I have never heard of eberspacher , but I am off to have a look now !
Tony

 

[spinsmall]

should of finished off my post, those heaters burn desil not much use in a petrol

 

[Guitarguy]

I had one in my old car and used it when the heater matrix decided to break. Put it this way- I would of been better off sitting round a cigarette for warmth!

 

[dhutch]

I've seen them. They don't provide much heat though, that'll be due to the limited amount of current it can draw through the cigar lighter socket.
To get any real heat from an electric fan heater in a car, you'd need to connect it straight to the battery with a set of jump leads.
then you'd need an alternator the size of a house to provide the power etc.

This is it.

Fag lighters (or 12v take off points, if you want to be PC) at best are at 20amps. 20*12=240watts a tenth of that of average fan heater. Ten times less in, ten times less out.

Alternator might be as much as 100amps = 1200watts but you want something left to run you headlights and recharge the battery, so even if you hard wire it in your walking 6-800watt really.


Daniel

 

[Avocet]

Most car heater matrices can dissipate several kilowatts of heat. You need a lot of heat to keep a car warm because they're moving through cold air and they're very poorly insulated. By comparison, the very best you can hope to get out of a fag lighter socket (as dhutch explains) is a few hundred Watts - so you'd need at least 10 of them (and the power to feed them!) to get anything half decent. At best, you'll blow the fag lighter fuse. At worst you'll set your car on fire!

Eberspachers (and Webasto sell a similar thing) burn diesel. I can't think of a petrol powered one. They're also quite expensive to buy new (probably rather more than getting the matrix fixed). Second hand, you might be able to pick up an Eberspacher truck cab heater, but they're likely to be 24 Volt, and still burn diesel anyway.

 

[dhutch]

Eberspachers (and Webasto sell a similar thing) burn diesel. They're also quite expensive to buy new..

And not always the most reliable thing or cheapest thing to keep running!