Joel, your block heater should be about 1500W, which is like a small personal-space heater - this is too much power to run through 100ft or more of extension cord, unless it's a very big cord. When I have to plug in the Blazer I use a 50ft 12-gauge extension cord, I should probably use a 10-gauge cord but they are so expensive... Anywho, forget about plugging the van in your hotel room, as I'm quite positive the hotel management will not be happy with you if you tried it. What you can do is make sure your batteries are in top condition, anything 3 years or older is not in top condition. Check your cables too, both the positive and the negative cables - they are nice and big, but corrosion will still eat them alive. Starter, needs to be in good shape, my goofball has been talking about some gear-drive starter or something, so this must be some upgrade over the factory starter. You can add a bigger cable to feed your glowplugs relay directly from the batteries, the Blazer has two 4-gauge cables for this purpose (all I had at the time) and I think I saw something like a 2-gauge cable on the F350 as well. As far as fuel add-ins, I run Howes, but there are other good ones as well.

 

If it's a cruddy terminal and the wire is OK, just cut and replace the terminal for under a buck. If you have a walmart nearby their batteries are cheaper and so far have served me very well. You can get free battery test at Autozone, just disconnect the jumper lead between them or the dummies will erroneously test them paralleled giving a false high reading.

 

Winterizing-less heavy gear oil in my fuel tank and a long sleeve shirt to bear the warm up time.

 

fuel additive is nothing more than Diesel Kleen. add some every other tank or so and you will be fine.
as far as an extension cord goes, 50 miles long should do the trick.
but really, if your batteries are good and the glow plug circuit is working properly, you should have no problems cold starting at -15 F. just let it warm up before driving at those temps.

 

The stroke needs to be opened up and retorqued too... I guess they're referred to as " Valve lever post bolts" on the IDI and are torqued to 20 lbs-ft.

I'm jealous too. It's my folks shop and I have to drive 50 miles to use it.

 

I think what youa are talking about are the "rocker pedistal bolts" I retorqued these when I was in there doing my glow plugs and it did smooth out and quiet down the idle a little.

 

If I have a 50 mile extention cord, I'm gonna have to call it a "Chevy volt xxxl"

 

Batteries are new, cables good, terminals look terminal looks like repairing all but one! Need to figure out how to test the GPS and I'll be good

 

Both positive or negative terminals are shot, Joel? Usually it's the positive ones tat corrode bad. You can do like was suggested in that case, at least on the driver-side - cut old terminal off, strip some of the insulation, and bolt a new terminal on. The passenger side one will be tricky tho...

 

You should have seen the engine compartment when we picked up these vans in texas, there were texas sized "mice" living in there and it looked like they survived on nothing but ford parts for 3 years while it sat....waiting for me! The batteries were toast (texas toast?) and right now the terminal connections have actually broken from me trying to tighten them. The negitive on drivers side is good but the other three need terminals. Something to think about doing, quickly I guess! I have plenty of slack on both sides due to having to reroute wires to make them work when I picked it up. Nice van though, for $760 (till you add in the $2000 tranny) but still worth it I think. 185,000 miles and it's replacing my 89 nissan hardbody truck with just under 600,000 (I can't kill it but the van was origially cheaper than fixing the a/c and putting cruise in the nissan and the fuel mileage is almost the same)

 

Joel,
As you travel northern states, the fuel should be blended for the average low temps in that area.

Where you run into problems is when you have fuel from a southern area, higher average low temp, and then travel to a much colder area.
Time to add fuel anti gel treatment.
The other thing that can get you, say the average low temp for the area you are in is 10 degrees.
A frigid arctic front moves in with temps running in the -15 range.
Now you fuel is blended for temps 25 degrees warmer that what you are seeing and you are probably looking at trouble.

A spare fuel filter or two, a gallon or so of Diesel Kleen to refill the new filters when you have to change one, a fuel filter wrench and a couple bottles of Diesel 911 for when you get stuck with gelled fuel in the tank make a good travel kit as far as the fuel system goes.

Buy questionable fuel, add Diesel Kleen to the tank then, not after you have trouble.

Gelled fuel is one of those things that is much cheaper and easier to handle before it happens.
Once you have a slug of paraffin stopping up a fuel line, even the 911 is going to have a hard time getting you running again without a warm place to melt the paraffin so it can diffuse back into the fuel.

Best test for glow plugs, ohm meter.
One lead on the nut, one lead on the electrical connector of the plug, wires removed.
Optimum resistance .5 to 1 ohm.
Takes a decent meter to test resistance that close to a dead short.
Resistance over 1 ohm, less heat produced while the plug is on and the controller will shorten the glow cycle since it thinks the glow plug is already hotter than it really is.

Information here, .5 ohms makes 200 watts of heat and draws 20 amps per glow plug at 10 volts at the plug.
By the time the resistance increases to 1 ohm, the heat drops to 100 watts and the amp draw also drops to 10 amps with the same 10 volt current to the plug.

As for the block heater, if you have a 1500 watt heater, a 50 foot cord should be 12 AWG wires minimum.
A 100 foot cord should be 8 AWG wires minimum.

You can replace the glow plugs with 20 dollar each glow plugs for less money than the 8 AWG 100 foot cord will cost.

 

As for running the rears singled out, same thing as running adapters to run duals on a SRW axle, except the offset is the other direction.

We had snow here today, nothing layed on the ground here, but they had a couple inches up in the mountains east of here, so no it is not going to be long.

 

Well, those who have converted to a dually setup by just adding spacers to their SRW hubs can probably get away with just running the inboard wheels, as because of the spacer the tire will sit right about where the factory SRW tire used to sit (halfway between the two hub bearings). For factory DRW axles tho, I think just running SRW wheels on those would be a better choice.

 

2wd diesel, dually full ton long bed crew cab. floor it around a turn on fresh soft snow and it barely slides out I ran lighter weight oil last year. this year my baby is getting parked bought a beeter for $900 with 33" snow tires 4x4. should be fun, also f150. anyone throw some weight in the bed? will be carying a colapsable camp shovel since im going to school in the bottom of the snow belt with lake effect