I recently moved from Ontario to Alberta. I knew nothing about engine block heater until I moved to Alberta since we never needed it in Ontario at extreme cool temperature.

Since I bought my car in 2008, I know that it has an engine block heater and there is a wire coming out of the engine, with no male plug prongs. Since it is getting colder here, I decided to connect a male plug to the wire by myself yesterday since it is pretty simple (positive, negative and ground).

So right now I know that my car is ready for the engine block heater to be connected to the outlet. However, I am not a professional electrician/ mechanic and I am not 100% confident that my engine block heater is still working since I have never used it. I am sort of questioning myself now if I did the connection right or not, and if the block heater is still working fine or not. I don't want it to burn my car when I connect it to the outlet.

Someone suggested that I can connect it to the outlet and see if the engine can start easily or not at extreme cold temperature. It was -25C here last week and this week it is getting warmer to above 5C. I cannot just test it by waiting until it gets cold and if it can start easily or not.

Does anyone have any suggestion what I can do to check whether the block heater is running or not by myself? I don't have any electrical tools but might be willing to get a multimeter if this is one way to do it. Or it would be fine for me to try to plug it to the outlet and touch the engine whether it is getting warm or not.

Some opinions would be greatly appreciated because the cold weather is certainly approaching soon and I don't want to wake up in the morning and can't start my car.

Thanks

 

Does the block heater use AC from home outlet? If yes, there must be a supply and return current path.

good luck

 

Thank you for the quick reply as usual. Do you mind to elaborate on how to check the supply and return current path? Is there any simple tools I can use? I am not that handy and wondering how you can do this. And yes I am assuming but pretty sure that this is and AC current from home outlet.

More details would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

What kind of heater is this, one of the freeze plug types.....I ask as I know a replacement cord can be bought for those (usually the "heater" has a three prong plug-kind of like what you see on a computer power cord). Anyway, if it is a freeze plug type, a volt meter is one way of testing (and comes in real handy for other car stuff). Then you can always plug it in and "feel" for heat....

 

Poorman212, thanks for the help again. Yes it does look like the computer power cord type. Do you know by any chance what voltage the voltmeter reading I should be expecting while checking for it?

Looking forward to hearing back from you...

 

Really you checking the resistance of the heating element. If it is broken, it will be "open".....kind of a small version of a heating element in an electric water heater for your house.

I can try to get some spec's from work next week.