Block Heater Cord

Can somebody with a 1990 2.9 trace their block heater cord for me? Mine seems to come from the front end of the valley, and loosely wander over the power stearing pump, and to the rad support. It appears that there is nothing securing it.

What I'm wondering is where my block heater is SUPPOSED to be, and how the cord is supposed to be run. Pictures would be helpful.

Your block heater would have been installed by a dealer or possibly even the owner. There's a few different styles, location is up to the installer, cord routing is also up to the installer. Sorry i'm no help, you're just gonna have to do whatever works best for your situation.

are you in Canada? were block heaters standard equipment in parts of Canada?

Yes, I'm in Canada. I've never seen a car sold her without a block heater (or truck, for that matter). All of my vehicles have had them.

All I know about block htrs is that if the engine uses coolant and you cant find the leak and it has block htr, look at that. Tie wraps or even string will work just fine.

I bought my 89 B2 from the original owner 4 years ago. In the sack full of receipts that came with it was the original window sticker. An engine block heater ($33.00) is listed in the "options" column between Cloth Bench Seat and Alloy Wheels. I think its safe to conclude it was a factory installed option. The block heater was installed in place of the "freeze plug" at the front of the drivers side head. The cord is fastened to the frame rail just behind the LF tire, and it still works!

Sam, that's where my block heater is, too. My cord, though, doesn't drop down, it runs across the top. I don't think there's enough cord on it to drop to the frame rail, and then come out somewhere around the grille. That does seem like the safest route to take, though.....

I'm guessing that you have a 2.9 in your BII?

My BII is stock with the 2.9. I think you should wire tie your cord to keep it from getting tangled in the fan belt. I suppose you could get a short heavy duty extension cord and route the connection to a more convenient location. Years ago I bought a 4 foot appliance extension cord for a window A/C unit.

Sam, that's what I'm thinking. Actually, I'd really like to install a battery blanket, and then run an extension cord from the grill to somewhere near the firewall. All three cords would then be zip tied together, and to clips on the fender. I just haven't gotten around to that, yet.

I got the extension cord in just before the snow flew last week. As planned, it is zip tied to the clips along the top of the right side fender, drops down in front of the rad, and comes out under the grill. The block heater cord, I found a (for lack of a better description) wire chase that is mounted to the firewall, and has a couple of other wires in it, so I took the end off the cord, ran it through there to the back corner on the right side of the engine bay, and plugged it into the extension cord.

I still have to do the battery blanket, but it got cold before I got a chance to put it in. I'd like to do an interior warmer, too, since I park outside.

For now, though, my block heater cord is routed out of the way of all moving parts, and that was exactly what I was trying to do.

I don't know where "SK" is, but if you plug in your block heater at night, in the morning you should have cabin heat in short order. Here in western Colorado, our winters are fairly mild, highs in the 30s to 40s with LOTS of sunshine! Lows usually in the low 20s. Occasionally we get some sub-zero temps, but not often. I have only plugged in my block heater the first winter I had the B2. The original owner lived in northern Idaho so the heater was necessary. As you probably know, these little rigs are great in the snow!

SK is Saskatchewan. We're north of the west half of North Dakota, and the east half of Montana. I only wish we had winter temperatures like yours. Here, below 0*F is normal. In fact, we spend two to three weeks at a time below 0*, with lows sometimes as low as -40*F. Last winter my truck was frequently a block of ice.

We also get snow and ice here, and my Ranger isn't any fun at all to drive in that stuff.

Right now, it's 25*F. That's about normal for this time of year, but it will get much colder. So far I haven't had to plug the truck in, this winter, but I know the time is coming. In fact, we've been pretty close to plug-in weather (-20*C and below), but the couple of times that it was supposed to get that cold I wasn't going out the next day, so I didn't plug it in.

The other problem we have here is that with it getting so cold, we have to scrape windows.

I'm sure you can imagine that a block heater here is essential. Without one, unless you have a VERY strong battery, and thin oil, you're not getting your vehicle started if you park it outside.

I still don't have the battery blanket in, or the car warmer. But, I thought y'all would like to see how I've run the cord, so while it was nice out today, I grabbed some pictures.



In this picture, you can see where my block heater is, as mentioned in my first post. It's a little hard to see, but it's just about on the right hand edge of the picture, there.



Here you can see the cord coming up behind the AC compressor. It has always come up there. It used to go from there up to the rad support and then out. Now, as you can see, it routes back to the fire wall.



On the fire wall, as you can see, I found a "tunnel". That has a hose of some description running through it, and had enough room for me to feed the cord through.



Here's the other end of that, with my cord coming out.



The block heater cord runs over against the right fender, where it plugs into my extension cord. The battery blanket will also plug in here, when I get around to installing it.



Ford was kind enough to add clips to the fender bolts. I don't have all of the zip ties done up yet (I'm waiting until I have the battery blanket installed), but the plan is that the extension cord will run to the front along the fender here, using the clips to hold it in place. The battery blanket's cord will run to the back of the engine bay using these same clips.



The cord goes through a hold in the rad support (not pictured), and comes out under the grill, beside the right head light assembly, as shown here. I thought about moving it over under the light, but there's a gasket in my way, so it's fine where it is. Besides, here I can pull it back inside in the summer.

Good Job! Looks like you need to polish your headlight lenses now. Just my opinion but I feel the best thing that I do for my truck in the Winter is the switch to 0w-30 synthetic motor oil. Very quick flow on start-up.