COLD HUMMER

[Boar-Ral]

Originally Posted by MDimitri

I live in Calgary where we have fluctuating temperatures in winter ranging from -40 to +18 celcius(Thanks greatly to the Chinook Winds). I always have my rig parked outside, my wife uses the garage and the rest of my stuff is on the other side of her car, hence no room for the H2! I looked into the Optima battery but found that it only provides you with a two year warranty and costs roughly $300.00+ and comes with a heavy duty 800 Cold Crank Amp kick over. Since this is the recommended standard for starting th H2 it is fine, but not for us up here...I obtained a Battery from a company up here with 1200 Cold Crank Amp kick over along with a 5year warranty for $98.00! It does not matter how cold it gets the truck starts every time. As for noises, the belt sometimes squeels a bit but thats about it!

Does anyone know if Optima changed their warranties? When I bought my Optima Yellow Top five years ago, it came with a ten year pro-rated warranty. If they have changed their warranty, it would really influence my decision to purchase another one. I think Canadian Tire offers a battery that even exceeds 1,200 CCA. I have also seen a couple other batteries using similar designs to Optima; I think Energizer makes a car battery using a spiral design and it costs less than half what the Optima did. Of course, there is more to an Optima than just the spiral design, but the Energizer might be sealed too and have those benefits. I need to look into this now.

[Boar-Ral]

Originally Posted by HUMMERcustoms.com/TAZ

I do not need these things anymore but, when farming the block heater in place of a freeze plug worked really well as starting the diesel engines on the huge tractors.

When I owned my diesel Excursion, the vehicle performed great in cold weather. Ford uses an inline fuel heater that seemed to work well. Though one winter, it dropped to around -55C and on my drive home from work, the engine began to surge and the check engine light came on. Made it to a heavy duty diesel shop and they gave me some free sample of fuel line conditioner, which I found amusing because even with the enormous tank on the Excursion, it still only took a quarter packet of this free sample. Everything worked though and within two blocks of driving, the check engine light went out and everything was good.

Man, I wish I still had the Excursion. 24 mpg for a vehicle that size was so nice.