Solar coolant circulator, works great!

Installed a solar coolant circulator in my coolant system and am getting coolant to heat the system faster than I ever imagined. I tried plugging the car in and turned on the circulator and actually took off from home immediately on grease. this means I can get longer driver time on grease and less on diesel! I plan to install one on my Jetta as well.

Discovered why coolant wasn't circulating

I finally got coolant circulating and my Hotfox is heating up as it should. I had thought I had air trapped in my coolant line and that was causing the coolant to not circulate well. It was that but more. My kit came with plastic T's that tap into my 3/4 inch heater hoses and T off to my system with a 3/8 inch nipple. I removed both T's and discovered that the plastic had softened and was deformed by the hose clamps. I also checked the 3/4 inch heater hose and found that it was bent slightly restricting flow. To correst tis I built T's with brass using a 3/4 inch brass T and two 3/4 inch nipples and one 3/8 inch nipple. When I installed this in the heater line I found that it was rather large and wanted to bend the hose even more than the plastic T. I went o Auto zone and purchased some stock 3/4 inch heater hose with some preformed bends that allowed me to make the connections and not restrict the flow of coolant. Now I have my system running and no restricted coolant. I hit 100 degrees at 1 mile vs 3 and switch over around 3-4 miles rather than 8 miles. Chris

Continue to deal with air lock!

I haven't posted for a long time and my conversion is still functioning but I have two problems. I am getting air trapped in my coolant line and can't seem to figure out where it is coming from. I tried swapping out a few fittings and installed a bleeder valve to free the system of trapped air. It works for a while then the air comes back. What this means for me is that my car will not switch over as fast as I would like, 5-7 miles of driving rather than 1-2 miles. I think I found a solution on the Plantdrive web site and that was to purchase a 12 volt coolant circulator that will circulate the coolant and get the car to heat up faster. I can plug my car in at night and the circulator will keep the system hot at night, and push any trapped air out to the coolant overflow. When I get it I will post some pictures. Another problem is Marty and I discovered is that the valves we use (Hydroforce three way) allow small amounts of fuel to cross contaminate. Thus I get small amounts of diesel in my svo tank and worse small amounts of svo in my diesel tank. This isn't a problem in California, but is the Northeast it is hugh. I began to have problems with starting and pulled some diesel out of my diesel tank and discovered the svo in my tank. The solution was to get from Craig at Plantdrive three check valves that are one way and keep this from happening. I wouldn't install a system without the check valves, especially if you live in a cold climate. I have over 60,000 miles driving my cars on svo. Chris