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As mentioned before, I had the exact same problem you experienced and the problem ended being mag chloride and road salts built up on my block heater chord connections; leading to current leakage. Once I cleaned those up, and sealed them to prevent future exposoure, my block heater is working fine in my GFI outlet -
Mark;
I haven't had a chance to check into that yet, but I don't think that it is the problem. The truck is still new (only about 1,500 miles on it) and we had such non-winter so far, it has had very little salt exposure, so I don't think that it would be a build up of that as the cause of the problem.
I've not used my engine heater on my '03 F250 6.0L PSD, but my brother-in-law generally has to use his on his '95 F350 7.3L PSD whenever the temp drops into the 40's or below, or that 7.3 gets really hard to start. (new glow plug / relay, etc). He's got about 240K miles on it.
I've noticed that his extension cord running the heater block gets REALLY warm.
My guess like the others is that the GFI on that circuit wouldn't handle it.
rgds,
TX
Duh! Time to buy a little larger extension cord.
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2005 F250 PSD 4X4 LB Crew-cab Arizona Beige / Blue Spring / Gauges / Coolant Filter / SG-II / Peragon Bed Cover/ P/S Filter/ MAG-HYTEC differential cover/
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I have found a solution that works for me. This goes without saying, but it's a "at your own risk" type of thing, and you need to know what you are doing when messing around with outlets in your house.
I simply went down to Home Depot and picked up a 20A GFCI outlet to replace the 15A one that keeps tripping. Swapped it out and it hasn't tripped again. So now I still have a GFCI outlet, and it's not constantly tripping. The old one was so bad that I couldn't even run any power tools in my garage off that outlet.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
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Curtis
2002 F-250 PSD
Gambling with 250/200's on PMR's
478hp/851tq on Haller's dyno - 7/28/12
Your connection to the Colorado diesel community.
Alright, a GFI is not an overcurrent device such as a circuit breaker. It is National Electrical Code requirement for a GFI to trip if the amount of current between the Neutral (grounding electrode conductor{white wire}) and Ground (grounded conductor) exceeds 3 - 5 milliamps. The cause is most likely the block heater if the extension cord has been replaced already and power tools work just fine in the recept. Check for any type of mark on the heater cord such as a cut or scrape. Take a multimeter and test the heater plug, left blade to ground. You must have an open reading.
This is the exact reason I tell people NOT to plug a deep freezer into a random outlet in the garage, if it's a newer home. Chances are that outlet is GFI protected and if it kicks for some random reason, you'll be throwin out some rotton mean. Pull a dedicated circuit and put in an outlet just for that.
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Chad
1991 Ranger XLT 2.3 5 speed with over 328,000 miles
1995 F-150 XL 4x4 5.8 351 with a 5 speed ZF Manual. 258,000 miles
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