Right now I'm running mobil 1 10w-30 full synthetic (fun finding all the new leaks) I was planning on going to a 5-30 rotella but I am still doing my hw on that one. I have a splice in heater for my lower rad hose, but it will be a few weeks before I can purchased a new breaker box (long story short they don't make parts for mine anymore). Once that is in I was either going to stick with the coolant heater, or go with the magnet heater. I'm really not a big fan of the freeze plug heater, we have alot of problems with them on our tow trucks. Thank you for your replies I'll just make sure to keep my keys handy so it does have some warm up time.

 

I feel like warming the oil is best for engine wear.

And park close to the fire, keep the XJ warm

 

I spent many years in CO. Denver area and west in the Towing business 14 trucks. 90% of my work was contract for police agencies both city, county, state. All of those contracts require that you be on the scene of a call in 15 min or less that was 24/7.

I had 9 drivers not including myself I drove more any 2 of my hired ones lol. But we had jump and run same as you cold starts and fast driving 80% or better of the time on scene before emergency responders.

This was in the mid 70' to mid 80's I was one of the first to use Mobil One in all my trucks on the metro Denver area. Other than an excellent filter designed for the oil all we did was turn on the headlights for about 5 to 10 seconds before starting the engines in winter.

When you have to you have to I never found a really good answer.

 

That's an excellent point: a very high resistance filters with a restrictive filter media and crappy bypass valve is even worse for your engine when the oil is so thick. A nice oversided WIX, Baldwin, Donaldson, Fleetguard, etc with good flow numbers will help a lot with ensuring your engine is well lubricated. I'm running a WIX 51459 right now, it's a 7" filter designed for HD diesel equipment without suspension, and I am very pleased with cold weather performance.


What's the idea behind the headlights? Just so the battery has a few seconds to wake up?

 

Curious about that too...

 

It supposedly warms the battery. I've never seen a difference, but if it works for you...

 

I would definitely run 5W30. If you have leaks, why not try some Mobil 1 HM 5W30?

 

My xj had had one from factory installed in the freeze plug location. My jeep is 23 years old and hasn't had a problem with it...
Just get one of these.

http://www.jeep4x4center.com/mopar-e...-82201506.html

 

Zombie, where in upstate NY are you from?
I grew up in Syracuse, and my younger brother still lives there..........
I use Mobil-1 5w30 here in Colorado..........but I also have remote start. when it's really cold I let it run while I'm getting ready for work.'
In your case, it's probably best to let it run for a minute or two to circulate before you romp on it............that's about all you can do beside some sort of engine heater.......
I seriously doubt your house wiring will overload with an engine heater.
If you can run a hair-dryer, or a microwave (most are 1000-1500 watts) you will have nothing to worry about plugging in a 600 watt engine heater.........

Keep on doin what you do!

 

My dad has a shop with with a few trucks. We run the same with the state police, but 15 minutes damn. Were pretty rural so it takes us a while. Did you guys engage the pto's to let the hydraulic fluid warm up a bit? I started doing that in this real cold weather, sucks trying to winch a car from a guard rail with a cold pump. As for the battery warming up you actually bring up an interesting point. I notices that for some reason my Jeep started alot easier when I used my remote start then when I jump in and do it with my key. Im wondering if this is because the remote start turns everything on for a bit before attempting to start. (So it can check the battery voltage) Interesting.

 

Dang 15 minutes is a pretty short amount of time! Guess that first 30-45 seconds to let oil cycle does count when that's the time line. I'd do synthetic OW30 before going to a block heater.

 

About 2 hours south of Syracuse towards the Middletown area.
The difference between say a hair dryer and block heater is the fact that given some of the colder night a block heater will run for an hour at a time and the hair dryer or the microwave will run maybe 5 minutes. The P/O of this place decided that it was better to run the whole house on only two breakers (one has the furnace and the other the fridge) then to buy breakers when they still made them for my box. I would rather not risk one of them not popping in the middle of the night and overheating.

 

Wow!

 

Sounds like my apartment. Kitchen is set up fine, the other 4 rooms (and hall) are one fuse.

Curious what sort of panel can you not get breakers for anymore?

 

Its an old Federal Pacific Electric manufactured in 1978. I might go ahead and do the block heater anyway for use when I'm at other places. At least I wont have to double cold start going to a call and when I come back.