Re: 12v to 110 converter


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Posted by Michael Hernke (MO) [108.162.216.91] on Sunday, January 07, 2018 at 09:47:45 :

In Reply to: 12v to 110 converter posted by Jerry in Idaho [172.68.174.19] on Saturday, January 06, 2018 at 21:04:26 :

At one point I really gave this some thought because my M37 does not have a grid heater on the 4bt and will not start when the temperatures drop below about 20 F. Because I tow the M37 to the places that I off road and they don't have power it can be a problem. We haven't had a cold winter in a while and in particular the new years run has been pretty warm until this year so it kind of felt to the back burner.

A kerosene heater just uses a big wick and so I think a basic manual block heater could be built. My thoughts were to build a small water tank that would be plumbed into the heater circuit with a small 12V circulation pump. Then to heat the tank use a small tank with a wick that would be manually lit. To fill the tank I planned to get a small electric fuel pump and use a float switch to cycle the pump as needed to maintain the small tank level from the main fuel tank. All of this would then be enclosed and insulated with just an access door to light the wick. I think a kerosene heater wick would be too much heat and I figured a good start might be one of those backyard tiki torch wicks. The draft for the fire would be convection which on an m37 is no problem because I could use the hole for the fording kit to route an exhaust. I think I could build this for around $200 but it wouldn't have any safety shutoffs and would be manual start and stop.

Since you mentioned using propane rather than diesel I got to thinking the water heater on my very small camper is propane powered and has electric start and all the required safety components and controls to maintain water temperature automatically. I did a quick search and found a 10 gallon tank heater with an 11K btu capacity for $250. This would not fit in my M37 engine bay but may fit in a 2006 engine bay. The burner could be adapted to something smaller and still have the safety controls. You would still need to plumb the tank yourself, figure out an exhaust, and get a 12V circulation pump. Propane burns clean and I assume these would be pretty efficient so I would guess the exhaust is not very hot, I think my camper has a PVC vent. You probably could vent to the engine bay and just make sure to plumb the feed air outside the engine bay. You can get very affordable 12V transfer pumps for circulation but most of them use flexible vanes and will not flow well when not running. This would impair heating to the truck during driving so you would have to have a bypass with a couple check valves or look for a small centrifugal pump. The circulation rate wouldn't need to be very much.

I should probably state that both of these would be projects and require a bit of engineering to be done safely. I am just offering a couple of my crazy ideas in the concept stage.



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