Oil dipstick heater vs. coolant heater

I'd rather get the oil warm so it makes its way through the engine as fast as possible

 

If I owned a truck I would be using both, so that both fluids and the metal would all be up to operating temperature at the same time.

 

The factory style coolant heater is located in the oil cooler housing. That’s going to warm the oil in the oil cooler. I’d have to guess an oil dipstick type warmer would be a universal type thing. Correct length wound be what’s important. I’ve also wondered if one of the extra drain plugs, especially the one on the side of the oil pan, was for installation of an oil heater. Looks to be the same size as a coolant block heater. Could probably use the same heater element. I wondered if it might melt the oil pan, being it’s some type of plastic/fiberglass mix. Must be some type of factory style heater. Even my old Jeep has it as an option, with a gasoline engine. Popular up in Canada.

 

Dipstick heaters are typically far lower wattage, most being below 100w while the immersion heaters are typically the 12 A 120 V circuit continuous max load of 1500 W.

They really can't kick it much higher because the watts per square inch is limited without destroying the oil.

If you live in some warm place without much wind they may help, but I would be in trouble where I live.

 

I have trucks with coolant heaters and pad oil heaters. They are small, 1100 watts total and most of them run off the APU.

 

The oil pan pad heaters are probably better than the dipstick type if you want to warm the oil.Generally the block heater does the best,heating coolant.

 

My previous 99 fld120 had a block heater and an oil pan heater in the N14.

 

They make thread in oil heaters that are similar to a block heater but much more surface area to wattage so the oil doesn’t boil on the element. They work well to heat the oil but don’t do much for the rest of the engine…we had one on a farm tractor years ago. Seems that most stuff around here just has a water jacket heater but I have seen a couple trucks with oil heaters too. If I did more cold weather work I would put both in. Maybe a 3-400 watt oil heater and a 1000-1200 watt block heater. That way they can be wired together and still plug into a regular outlet.

 

Coolant heater with T6 full synthetic oil has me covered……