zerostart in mkiv jetta

colezy9

Veteran Member
Joined
Jul 19, 2006
Location
Canada
TDI
2013 Passat TDI Highline
What models are compatible? From what I read I would like to go with 1500W - Is part #3505003 compatible with my mkiv?[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]
 

jasonTDI

TDI GURU Vendor , w/Business number
Joined
Apr 26, 2001
Location
Oregon, WI
TDI
04', 05', 06' TDI's. Audi SQ5, RAM Rebel
The 1000W one is just fine for a TDI. At -15F it still keeps the car at 190F.

Or just go to www.frostheater.com and get one pre made for your car. Unless driving around for 3 hours is what your time is worth to you. And the nay-sayers about cost savings on doing it yourself. ZIP IT! We don't need to hear it! Again.....and again. Yes, you CAN do it but it's a waste of time.
 

cheeba

Veteran Member
Joined
May 9, 2006
Location
Regina, Saskatchewan
TDI
'02 Audi TT 225
Despite Jason's unsubstantiated claims, it took me about 20 minutes to drive to and from Canadian Tire to buy a Zerostart for my A4. If your car is an ALH manual, install also doesn't require anything other than the Zerostart unit, about 12" of 5/8" coolant hose, and some hose clamps. I don't know about installs on other vehicles.

The 1000w and 1500w versions are in stock at the East and South Canadian Tires (I'm in Regina, as well). If you have a heated garage, I can give you a hand installing it.
 
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colezy9

Veteran Member
Joined
Jul 19, 2006
Location
Canada
TDI
2013 Passat TDI Highline
Thanks guys i picked the 1500w zerostart up for $40 shipped from a tdiclub member.
 

doc_m

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Dec 2, 2002
Location
somwhere
TDI
None
yes i would agree for me it took one call to my local parts store and they had it in stock, much much less $ than frostheater and a quick easy install
 

LNXGUY

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Jan 10, 2004
Location
Barrie, Ont, Canada
TDI
'05 Jetta TDI Wagon
cheeba said:
Despite Jason's unsubstantiated claims, it took me about 20 minutes to drive to and from Canadian Tire to buy a Zerostart for my A4. If your car is an ALH manual, install also doesn't require anything other than the Zerostart unit, about 12" of 3/8" coolant hose, and some hose clamps. I don't know about installs on other vehicles.

The 1000w and 1500w versions are in stock at the East and South Canadian Tires (I'm in Regina, as well). If you have a heated garage, I can give you a hand installing it.

You mean you didn't need any fancy hoses? lol get outta here :) I used all my stock hoses, and a simple 5/8ths or 1/2" coupler... can't remember the size.
 

jasonTDI

TDI GURU Vendor , w/Business number
Joined
Apr 26, 2001
Location
Oregon, WI
TDI
04', 05', 06' TDI's. Audi SQ5, RAM Rebel
All canadians....hard to find a bunch of stuff here....
 

cheeba

Veteran Member
Joined
May 9, 2006
Location
Regina, Saskatchewan
TDI
'02 Audi TT 225
LNXGUY said:
You mean you didn't need any fancy hoses? lol get outta here :) I used all my stock hoses, and a simple 5/8ths or 1/2" coupler... can't remember the size.
Haha, yup. I don't know what all the BS is about needing to run around for hours and buying all these parts. I flipped the stock hose from the oil cooler to the head around, ran 12" of straight 5/8" from the Zerostart to the oil cooler, and mounted the Zerostart in the appropriate place by bending the bracket it came with.

I edited my original post to state 5/8", rather the incorrect 3/8".
 

jettawreck

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Aug 2, 2004
Location
Northern Minnesota-55744
TDI
2001 Jetta and 2003 Jetta
The local "fleet type" store had three (2 now) #3305003 Zerostarts on the shelf in original boxes looking like they had been there a long time. The price on them was $21.99. For that price I'll do my own "kit". I'll be getting to the install this weekend hopefully as it was -11F last nite at 9pm.
When I had called a local auto parts store with the Zerostart #3305002 they said it was replaced by Kats #18100 (1000 watt cylinder shaped heater) which would probably work fine but mounting might be tricky.
 

dieselgus

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 24, 2003
Location
PA, SK
TDI
04 Variant Black/Black
You can also get everything you need at Canadian Tire. Think I was under $70 when I did mine
 

Northman

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 6, 2003
Me too and I was lucky enough to get the 750 watt which is a lot easier on the electic bill and is plenty hot. Have been getting summer starts all winter for six winters now and hopefully will get another six.
 

DrewD

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 23, 2004
1500 is way to go. I don't want summer starts, I want a fully warmed up engine with instant heat. A 1000 watt heater does allow for easy starts and the temp is at 190 deg F for about 3 seconds then quickly drops down to cold with little heat coming out of the vents. With a 1500 watt heater, the temp is also at 190 at start and only drops down to 150 deg F and quickly rebounds!

Been using my 1500W heater for 1.5 years now with no problems over 38,000 miles of use.
 
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scurvy

Good Ol' Boy
Joined
Feb 21, 2006
Location
Chicago IL USA
TDI
2006 Golf
Northman said:
Me too and I was lucky enough to get the 750 watt which is a lot easier on the electic bill and is plenty hot.
While I concur that a Zerostart makes for MUCH easier starts, I take umbrage with your math. A 750W unit can get the coolant just as hot as a 1000W or 1500W unit (in adiabatic conditions) ... it just takes longer.
750W * 4 hours == 1000W * 3 hours == 1500W * 2 hours - same amount of energy transferred to the coolant, same amount of electricity consumed, same charge on your electric bill.

That being said, the lower powered units cannot heat up as much or as quickly as the bigger units in real world use. While you are heating up the coolant, it is giving off its energy to the (cold) air in the engine compartment which is wafting out the grill/hood/etc. The larger units can put more energy into the coolant quicker so they heat the coolant up faster, even considering the losses to the environment. They may actually use less energy overall than running a lower powered zerostart (for a much longer time) to achieve the same effect on coolant temperature.
 

morrow

Active member
Joined
Nov 1, 2007
Location
Superior, WI
TDI
1998 New Beetle TDI
Checker Auto Parts (USA) also carries Zerostart heaters, the 1000 Watt one is $65. I want to get my heater in before the holidays, so I bought locally. I'm sure the kit would be easier, but it seems like everything is a time crunch these days.
 
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scurvy

Good Ol' Boy
Joined
Feb 21, 2006
Location
Chicago IL USA
TDI
2006 Golf
morrow said:
Checker Auto Parts (USA) also carries Zerostart heaters, the 1000 Watt one is $65.
I ordered mine from a heavy truck place that ordered it through their Volvo truck parts division, Zerostart p/n 3305002, for under $40. Works like a charm, tho. I also recommend the Marinco outlet in the driver's side lower grille - works like a charm and no popping the hood to plug in your car.
 

morrow

Active member
Joined
Nov 1, 2007
Location
Superior, WI
TDI
1998 New Beetle TDI
scurvy said:
I ordered mine from a heavy truck place that ordered it through their Volvo truck parts division, Zerostart p/n 3305002, for under $40. Works like a charm, tho. I also recommend the Marinco outlet in the driver's side lower grille - works like a charm and no popping the hood to plug in your car.
Under $40, that's a nice price. I've seen Kats heaters for that price locally but not the Zerostart. I was thinking of getting a Kats, but I figured that Zerostart already has a good reputation with these cars so I ponied up the extra cash. I've always just drove around with the plug poking out of the hood during the winter on my other diesels but I might look at one of those covered outlets like you mentioned.
 

scurvy

Good Ol' Boy
Joined
Feb 21, 2006
Location
Chicago IL USA
TDI
2006 Golf
Just to get this out there again, here's what Zerostart advertises for their coolant heaters' ability to warm up your engine coolant (taken from zerostart website via Wingnut):



As you can see after about 3 hours your gains level off fairly quickly, also that the 1500W version performs over twice as fast as the 750W and the 1000W is much faster than the 750W. If we take this graph as gospel and all other things remaining equal, in order to get 50F (27C) rise in temperature of the coolant, it takes:
1500W * 1.25 hours = 1.875 kWh
1000W * 2.5 hours = 2.5 kWh (+33% over 1500W)
750W * 7 hours = 5.25 kWh (+109% over 1000W; +280% over 1500W)

It uses less energy overall to run a 1500W heater for a MUCH shorter amount of time than the 750W heater for much, much longer. If I had this to do over again, I would probably stick with the kilowatt heater. Why? The 1500W may blow circuit breakers, especially if there's anything else on the circuit (like my garage door opener). It would REALLY suck to get out to the garage in the morning only to find a cold car in a dark garage.

Were extention cords, outlets & breakers no concern, I would recommend the 1500W unit for the reasons mentioned above, but 12.5 amps is a LOT to draw out of one outlet.

scurvy
 

Northman

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 6, 2003
I've got one of each, 750 for the tdi and 1500 for my snow machine. The 750 pulls 6.1 amps and the 1500 pulls 12.8 and I thought they would cut out when the coolant was up to temperature but after checking many times many hours after plugging them in, I still get the same amp draw. So they are costly but nothing beats a warm engine at startup in my country where minus 40 isn't unusual.
 

gern_blanston

Veteran Member
Joined
Dec 3, 2002
Location
PNW
TDI
Golf, '03, Silver
DrewD said:
1500 is way to go. I don't want summer starts, I want a fully warmed up engine with instant heat. A 1000 watt heater does allow for easy starts and the temp is at 190 deg F for about 3 seconds then quickly drops down to cold with little heat coming out of the vents. With a 1500 watt heater, the temp is also at 190 at start and only drops down to 150 deg F and quickly rebounds!
That's weird. I have a 1000W and I get in the car and see 190, it drops to 160-ish for a minute when I start up, and then it's back up to 190. It's not really cold here (coldest morning so far is 22 degrees F) but it works great.
 

morrow

Active member
Joined
Nov 1, 2007
Location
Superior, WI
TDI
1998 New Beetle TDI
My 1000 Watt Zerostart came in today and the price I was quoted was way over. I ended up only paying $30 for it and $18 for the one piece hose mentioned by doc_m in another post. Pretty sweet, that kind of stuff never happens to me :D
 

morrow

Active member
Joined
Nov 1, 2007
Location
Superior, WI
TDI
1998 New Beetle TDI
morrow said:
My 1000 Watt Zerostart came in today and the price I was quoted was way over. I ended up only paying $30 for it and $18 for the one piece hose mentioned by doc_m in another post. Pretty sweet, that kind of stuff never happens to me :D
I've had the heater installed for a few weeks now, it works great and I ended up not needing the extra hose. I found that I needed to do the following on my Beetle (I did all of this from the top of the engine because I didn't want to remove my Panzer plate.)

0) Remove the battery and battery tray.
1) Cut the web in between the oil cooler hoses.
2) Disconnect the hose to the oil cooler.
3) Connect the input of the heater to the oil cooler with a short length of regular 5/8" heater hose.
4) Then swap the end that was connected to the oil cooler and put it on the head output.
5) Put the end that was on the head output onto the output of the heater (BTW, I used both factory spring type clamps to secure the hoses to the heater. I did this because that type never seems to leak and I didn't want to have to tear everything apart just to tighten the worm drive hose clamps that came with the heater).
6) Ziptie a couple inches of heater hose split lengthwise to any parts that looked like they would chafe (over the flipped heater hose and the power steering lines).
7) Remove the nut that secures the large wire under the battery.
8) Bolt the two mounting brackets that came with the heater to form two "L's" that face away from each other and secure it to the nut removed in step 7 and to the heater.
9) Reinstall battery tray and battery.
10) Add coolant.

It sounds like a lot of work and it is, it was a real PITA to get it to fit into such a small space but now that it's there I would do it all over again just for the convenience of having such easy starts and heat so quick.
 

scurvy

Good Ol' Boy
Joined
Feb 21, 2006
Location
Chicago IL USA
TDI
2006 Golf
jkima said:
I have a 2004 tdi jetta,would like diagram of connection for installing zerostart heater, can someone help
This will be very helpful for you, not only for this but further queries you may have. There's also 3 links in my sig in the "1000W Zerostart" portion, check those after you've read and understood the first link.

scurvy
 
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