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USED TO WHEN I'D PLUG MY TRUCK IN I WOULD SHOW TEMP ON MY GAUGE INSIDE TRUCK WHEN I TURNED KEY ON. NOW THE INDICATOR DOESN'T EVEN MOVE, AND HARDER ON A COLD START NOW... COULD MY BLOCK HEATER BE OUT OT WHAT? TELL ME WHAT TO LOOK FOR PLEASE...
check you plug end on the truck. The wire can break right behind the plug under the insulation. Also, stupid question to ask but did you double check the outlet to make sure it didn't throw the breaker? These heaters can draw some power.
X2 on checking the oulet for blown breakers, block heaters are just big resistors. My outside outlets are on a ground fault breaker, and if you plug 2 cars in, the breaker blows.
Ohm it out. It is simply a resistor. Make sure your plug elements are clean. Look for 10- 15 ohms across the plug. If you don't have that, make sure your wires are good. If wires and such are good and you still show an "open" then you've lost the heater. If things look good, like others have said, make sure your circuit breaker is engaged. The heater will draw 10+ amps so a few other devices on the circuit can cause an overload.
when it is plug in to the truck feel where it plugs in to the block it should get pretty hot farily quick. i have a block heater and oil pan heater and battery blankets all pluged in on my PSD and i dont have problems with poping brakers!!!
A simple way to tell if you are getting power is plug it in at nite and unplug it. You shoudl see a slight "spark" of light when you do. Mine has done this for years. Until this winter it didn't, and it tuned out my plug was bad. Replaced the plug from Ed and back to working aagin and the "spark" came back. Very simple way to check to see if getting power and the cord is working.
And fwiw....do not leave your truck plugged in for days. All it is doing is running up your electric bill. From completely cold...you only need to plug truck in about 3-4 hours and it will be as warm as it will get. I have mine on a heavy duty timer.
I go to bed when most people wake up and its not very cold here yet. When it gets colder here, my wife will plug the cord into the wall when she leaves at 7:40 and by the time I leave again at noon, the temp hand is just slightly below the normal range. I don't know why but i always look at it while waiting on the WTS light to go out.
i just replaced the cord on my heater...think i bought it on ebay...but the cord will sometimes have a low level fault that won't trip the breaker, but will trip the ground fault on the receptacle...