As winter arrives, I find that this year I'll have to park the Jag outside ('87 XJ-S V12). Since it's my daily driver, storage is out of the question.

Running electricity to it won't be a big deal, as I can park it in our driveway right up against the garage.

Since we often get below +10 F (-12 C) to -10 F (-23 C), I'm thinking I'm going to need two things, a way to keep the engine warm(er), and a way to trickle charge the battery.

I'm working on a trickle-charge connection that won't involve having to constantly open the boot and disconnect cables. So my issue now is how to keep the engine warm.

I would prefer to avoid the route of messing with the plumbing, i.e. heaters that go into the cooling lines (I've finally got the car not leaking anything and would prefer to keep it that way). I've seen the pad type heaters that affix to the bottom of the oil pan, heard of people putting a 150 watt light bulb in the V (well, those of us who have removed the GM A/C compressor at least), putting a light bulb below the oil pan, and so on.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

John

 

if its a daily driver as long as you have a good battery in it the trickle charger shouldn't be necessary, we get -40*F here and i don't put a trickle charger on anything that i drive regularly. +10 really isn't even cold enough to need a block heater. but they make block heaters that you knock out a frost plug and install the heating element in the block. they also make oil pan heaters you can glue to the oil pan, if you want a block heater i would go with one of those two styles.

 

I would go with a block heater personally. Only reason being that they are so easy to fit - just knock out a core plug (or frost plug as the previous user mentioned) and fit the little element. Thing is, they heat the whole of the coolant and eventually the whole of the engine block - perfect. The only problem would be finding an easily accessible one..... I had my block heater leak on an old Grand Cherokee and taking it out was one of the easiest things I've ever done! Of course you will have to refill the cooling system - which is the messy bit... Good Luck.

 

The factory cold weather equipment put the block heater in the lower rad hose. Not ideal placement, but presumably there is a reason Jaguar didn't go the frost plug route, as they did a heater screwed into the block for the earlier XK engines. On the V12 it's a cast aluminium housing that the block heater screws into and then the lower rad hoses attach to it, on the later AJ16 engines it's moulded into the hose and there is a place for the block heater to screw into.
Factory V12 block heater placement is at the bend under the PS pulley:
Oil is important for cold weather too, get the lowest first number you can, like 0 (preferrebly) or 5, and the second number as whatever would be recommended. Mobil makes a 0W40 synthetic, that works well.