Diesel glow heater plug - homemade !!?

minh-thanh said:

I am thinking of making a Diesel Glow Heater Plug
I am planning to make it small (size as in the picture -red) and use 6volt
Your opinion ??
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ajoeiam said:

Suggest you consider using more than 6V - - - heaters work on energy and at 6V to get say 120W you will need 20A of current.
That's a LOT of current in a small item (you wiring will have to be quite large to handle the current).
Even at 12 V you're still talking about 10A and that's still needs some likely 12 ga wire (don't know what that is in mm2 - - - sorry) and that wire
will be almost as big a dia as I think your plug is.

(Did some looking to see if I could find amperage draw but nothing and that was looking at US and a couple different European manufacturers.)

HTH

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Peter Twissell said:

I presume there's agood reason why you couldn't use a conventional RC engine glow plug?

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minh-thanh said:

I am thinking of making a Diesel Glow Heater Plug
I am planning to make it small (size as in the picture -red) and use 6volt
Your opinion ??
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bluejets said:

Main query would be, why do you think you need one ?
Model diesel engines will not run on conventional diesel fuel anyhow.
If methanol fuel, standard glow plug from rc could be used.
I'm certain there is a way to get around it's short length if needed.
Commercial model engines have always found a way.

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minh-thanh said:

I have done 1 cylinder and 4 cylinder diesel engines and they both run on diesel
With the 1 cylinder it is relatively easy to run on diesel - 20mm bore 40mm stroke
With the 4 cylinder it is a bit harder to start - 20mm bore 36mm stroke, it needs a bit of heat - maybe because I changed the piston stroke to be shorter and it has more aluminium - not sure
Diesel glow heater plug : it is as an extra option

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petertha said:

Somewhere in my travels I came across an article where someone harvested glow wire from RC plugs & used an AliExpress battery spot welder to join it to his (specialized) housing. I cant recall if it was for a combustion engine, or rocket motor or... Apparently the wire is difficult to source, at least in reasonable quantity. And whatever his application was, RC plug wire was the only material that could withstand the environment.

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bluejets said:

Have any video on that?

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bluejets said:

As far as I am aware it is standard nichrome wire.
I have rolls of the stuff here left over from the days of repairing ice machines.

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bluejets said:

As far as I am aware it is standard nichrome wire.
I have rolls of the stuff here left over from the days of repairing ice machines.

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minh-thanh said:

Here :
1 Cyl
https://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/threads/mini-diesel-engine.31832/post-369025

4 Cyl
https://www.homemodelenginemachinis...e-kromhout-gardner-4lw-1940.33617/post-399726

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bluejets said:

I doubt you will get sufficient resistance from a small heater coil to run at 6v let alone 12v.
Reason why rc glow plugs run at around 4A @1.5v.
Ohms law.

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bluejets said:

So kero not diesel fuel.

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minh-thanh said:

To increase resistance: wind more turns of wire.
Read again what I said in my topic !!
My engine runs on both kerosene and diesel .

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bluejets said:

You will NOT have sufficient space to fit that amount of nichrome wire.
As I said, refer ohms law.
My my what a load of weekend experts we have here.

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ranger said:

Hi, If the idea is to heat the air to aid starting rather than running do you have room in the intake manifold to fit a glow plug? As many full size diesel engines used to have, heating intake air before it enters the cylinders, instead of inside the combustion chambers.

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Peter Twissell said:

Can we keep discussions civil please?
We are all hobbyists and learning as we proceed.

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