[Vwdiesel] winter fronts

[Drew MacPherson]

One of the big reasons behind shutters was to keep the gas engine hot
enough to burn kerosene.  These engines usually had special manifolds
where the intake was wrapped in exhaust gas to make sure that the air/fuel
mixture was hot enough to ignite from the spark plug.  When they came
along, diesels also were a challenge to keep warm.

In the days before electric fans and thermostatic clutches, fans would
pull a lot of air through the rad, and blow it back over the motor, which
was also usually unshrouded.  I expect that in those days thermostats and
cooling systems were not anywhere near as well designed as they are now
either.

I've only run into one situation where a well-maintained VW diesel was
unable to maintain operating temps at highway speed, and that was my 92
1.6 NA Golf, and at 60mph in -45 to -50C I needed a piece of cardboard
over the grille to keep the coolant guage in the operating range.  Don't
ever plan on having to do that again...

Drew


On Sun, 16 Feb 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 16, 2003 at 11:18:35AM -0500, Drew MacPherson wrote:
> >
> > VW sold winter fronts for their A1 and A2 cars as Autobahn accessories.
> >
> > The idea of blocking airflow through the rad has been around for a long
> > time - farm and construction equipment utilized mechanically controlled
> > louvres (or shutters) in front of the rad to help keep engines in the
> > optimal operating range.  These shutters were standard equipment on many
> > engines equipped to burn kerosense, and early diesels as well.
> >
>
>     Yes, I even owned a Mack with the louvers. But, what is the point of them if
> you have the proper thermostat?
>
>     I guess I was influenced early on, in highschool automech class, by a
> teacher who said that ideally you wanted an engine to run just as close to
> boiling over as possible without actually doing it, and, in fact, it would be a
> whole lot more efficient if you could run it much hotter than that, which was
> one of the reasons for designing vehicles with air-cooled engines (besides
> weight and less parts) was that they were basically more efficient since they
> could run with much higher temps.
>     So one thing I've always done in the past was to put the hottest thermostat
> I could get in any car I got my hands on. Now with computer controlled efi such
> as I have in my Toyota 4x4, I'm not sure if messing with that is a good idea,
> but it heats up very fast and there's never any lack of heat in the cab, so I
> haven't bothered to look at it, but I put a 190 in my nissan diesel pu, and plan
> to do the same with my '82 westy, when I get it back on the road once they quit
> salting them.
>     I guess my first experiment with raising the temp of an efi system will be
> with my wife's RAV4 now that the warranty is over. It takes forever to heat up,
> but I'll probably have to get a manual first to figure out how the efi works.
>
>
>  --
> Harmon Seaver
> CyberShamanix
> http://www.cybershamanix.com
>
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