APU vs idling in very cold weather?

Yeah I usually keep mine on at night. Sitting in -3 degree weather currently, reefer is 3/4 with anti gel, and I got fuel at the North Bend/Seattle TA. Hope it’s enough to not gel, I do have a heated fuel water separator so I hope that helps in case it gels.

 

I wonder if this is a programming thing?

Seems I was able to manually turn mine on and let it run until I shut it off??

 

There’s gotta be a way to mess with the controller in the sleeper to get her running all night.

 

None of the tk units I've had were programmable to the driver , they were strictly start stop but I was a company driver too so don't know for sure .
My carrier is programmable in many different configurations which I like much better .

 

All I can say is put as much draw on the batteries as possible.

 

Yeah. Maybe?
I owned it but am 90% sure I was able to let it run but that was awhile ago
I have an Onan generator now and need to see if it can be programmed to fire for weeks at a time rather than the 2 days it has now
It will only fire up for two days after I leave the truck and then it goes into some safety mode but when I park it’s usually for 2-3 weeks and I want it to continuously kick on when batteries get low like my TK did

 

I would suspect the tk is programmable to the fleets specs .
I know the carriers in my fleets company trucks have all the programing to the driver disabled....they run continuous for 10 hours and shut themselves off , then have to be restarted again .

 

I think most of these things are programmable to the owner .
With my carrier I get continuous, ambient temp , interior temp , battery voltage or a combination of conditions...none of which are perfect by the way .

 

What weight oil in that diesel?
It matters. Personally I don’t like going in below 10f with 15w-40 and not plugged in.
10w-30 single digits aren’t too bad.
5-40 I’m more worried about batteries than oil.
At -5 and below I just idle. My Reefer runs on continuous as well.
At -25 and colder I’m idling and running a bunk heater while drinking hot tea and listening to Christmas carols.

 

Holy necro batman. And no at the time i had no inverter and the block heater didnt work anyway. That has long since been fixed now though.

Wasnt talking about it pulling heat from the engine directly. Just from the compartment. Radator and engine may have warm coolant but if the windchill is pulling that heat from the compartment and off the surface of the block there may not be enough transfer to keep exposed lines/filters warm enough to not ice and/or gel.

Big killer is it finds every nook crack and cranny into your cab and forces the heat right out. So you need a beefy heater in some areas.