hujev

Hi - the guy I bought this from must've had a garage or didn't drive in the winter, as it's standard in interior Alaska to equip your vehicles for cold weather with:
1. a block heater,
2. an oil pan heater,
3. an auto transmission pan heater (if auto), and
4. a battery heater pad or trickle charger...
(some have other things: an interior heater, a retracting plug-in cord, gearbox heaters, etc!)

Here in Fbx, it usually gets down to -50f or colder once a winter; about 10-15 days per winter of -40 normal, and zero f is warm. Outside plugins are everywhere, as are frozen cars that were mistakenly left unplugged.

Mine has only an inline coolant heater, which will work in the meantime since it's not much below zero f so far, but I need to add immediately the oil pan heater and battery heater. Probably a block heater later too, at least for backup.

Oil (and transmission) pan heaters, in case you didn't know, are flat 'heat blankets' that you adhere flat to the underside of the pan with hi temp RTV silicone adhesive. (Searching the web gives photos - they're maroon colored usually.) A real help when you're in very cold climates and being unable to start may be rather dangerous. They come in various sizes to fit the different mounting areas.

My question: what is the surface area dimensions on the bottom of the oil pan on my car?

Since I just got it a few weeks ago I haven't had time to get down there measure myself, and hoping to get advice here so I can buy one and put it on this weekend when I do some maintenance. It looks like from the pictures I've seen that there are some cooling ridges toward the front of the pan, which I believe I could also count as surface mounting area since I could adhere the heater to the ridge tops (overheating in summer shan't be a problem). The plastic cover down below ought to also help keep it in good shape - pan heaters are something of a consumable item and don't usually last forever because of abrasion.

The best heater installation comes close to the edges but does not go over so that it remains flat. Ideally the largest size possible of course. So what I need is a dimension like '10 x 12"' or whatever the flat bottom area dimensions are.

Can someone measure and let me know, or tell me which size they use?

hujev

Anybody?

I just need a width x length of the flat area on the pan, in the area below the drain plug.

I've got a few pix of the pan off parts websites, so guess i will guess based on how it looks compared to the plug and spacing between bolts.

Getting down to the -30 degree f's here or so now, so really want to get a pan heater on this weekend when I do my first work on the car (in a heated garage). But don't want to have to get under it & the plastic cover off, measure, THEN put together and go get part!

/robert