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This cartridge heater clips into the cavity of your engine block and submerges in the coolant to keep engine fluids from thickening. Results in easier start-ups, faster heating of your cab, and less wear and tear on your Dodge Durango in cold weather.
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Benefits of a Heated Engine
Start your engine easier and warm your cab faster in cold weather with this cartridge-style engine block heater. Heating your engine coolant keeps it from thickening and freezing, resulting in more reliable start-ups and smoother operation altogether. It also lessens the workload and extends the life of your vehicle's battery. And because starting your engine when it's warm creates less condensation in the engine block than starting it when it's cold, your engine will get better initial fuel vaporization, which causes fewer emissions and less pollution.
Cartridge-Style Heater
This cartridge-style heater simply clips into the cavity of your engine block. There is no need to remove the core frost plug. The power cord on the heater is removable so that you won't need to buy a whole new heater if the cord gets damaged. The cord can be routed through your grille for easy access to a 120-volt outlet or extension cord. Make sure the heating element is fully submerged in the coolant before plugging it in.
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to be taking a look at Kat's Heaters custom fit cartridge style engine block heater. You'll want to refer to the fit guide here etrailer.com to determine which block heater is going to be appropriate for your vehicle and the engine. These cartridge style heaters are custom fit for your engines, and just slide right into the block, and transfer heat through the block to help warm up the coolant, to allow for easier starting and quicker heat up times. So what this means for you is you don't have to worry about difficult starts, making it for a longer time in the morning to get started, or potentially miss work. The people who can benefit from this most are ones that drive diesel engines. Diesels use glow plugs to heat the engine.
However, sometimes it can take several key cycles to get the engine warm enough to properly start. Having a block heater on it like this will help ensure that it will fire right up. Additionally, your engine is going to heat up faster since its had a headstart, so you're going to have heat coming out your events faster on your way to work. It features a five foot cord that can be routed up to your grill area, where it can be mounted permanently.So whenever you want to use it, you can simply plug an extension cord in, plug it into the wall, and it'll start to heat up your block. The heater produces 400 watts of power.
And this is pretty substantial, so this is going to warm it up fairly quickly and evenly throughout. Even though it does come from a central point. It's made of a durable cast aluminum, so it's going to be lightweight and corrosion resistant. We're under our vehicle now. We're going to show you a typical installation.
Looking at the backside of our engine block, now the backside isn't always where they're going to be, but it will be on your engine block. You are looking for a cavity. You can see ours right up here. Now we'll take our heater. We're going to insert it in the hole.
It's a good idea to take some compressed air or something and blow out any dirt and debris in the hole. And then also coat your heater with silicone. This will help transfer heat better, as well as keep out moisture from getting inside.We're not going to be coating ours with silicone today for demonstration purposes, but afterwards you'd simply slide it in. And that's what it'll look like when you've got it fully inserted. As you can see, it's flush up against the block, and our clip has clipped around the side of the block there, and this will ensure that it can't come back out. Next you'll just route the wire up to the front of the vehicle. A good place for it is behind the grill, where you can tuck it back out of the way, and you won't be able to see it, but you can access it to plug it in when you need it. Whenever you're routing your wire, you want to avoid any moving objects such as your steering or drive train components. And any excessively hot objects, such as your exhaust. So you can see here we've got our cord routed to the front of the vehicle right in the center.We can now plug it in with an extension cord, and start heating up our engine. And then if we're not using it, we can easily tuck it back out of the way, and you don't even know it's there. There is no on or off switch, as soon as you plug it in it begins to heat. Now we do have ours on a lift. You'll most likely be doing this on the ground. We've had it plugged in for about 20 minutes. Let's check our temperatures. At the plug, we're measuring about 110 degrees. You can see as we take a measurement on the side of our block, we're at about 100 degrees, so it's spreading pretty well throughout our engine. So as you can imagine, if it was 19 degrees outside, this would be like starting your vehicle on a warm summer day. And that completes our look at Kat's Heaters custom fit cartridge style engine block heaters.
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars (137 Customer Reviews)
This cartridge heater clips into the cavity of your engine block and submerges in the coolant to keep engine fluids from thickening. Results in easier start-ups, faster heating of your cab, and less wear and tear on your vehicle in cold weather.2014 Dodge Ram 5.7L uses Kat’s 11816 cartridge heater. Perfect fit. Must remove the two starter bolts and slide it out of the way. Don’t disconnect starter wires. Just slide starter out of the way. Easily done with truck on ramps. Clean out hole. Find a correct size retaining screw. Not sure what size or If hole is threaded. Too much rust. Just be able to jam some screw in there to retain the cartridge, until silicone dries. Smear about an inch wide layer of high temp silicone around the base of the cartridge. Insert cartridge, twist back and forth to spread silicone, and hold in place with retaining screw. Route wire straight forward. I used 1 1/8” spade bit to drill a hole in black plastic in bumper, but my bumper was already messed up, so I didn’t care much. Plug hangs out grill about 3”. Use zip ties to secure cord to square tubing frame post inside bumper.
I have a 2014 Ram 1500 with the 5.7 hemi. The heater element was easy to install. It took a while to find the hole in the engine block (behind the starter motor) but it was a perfect fit. The engine oil is warm enough in a couple of hours for easy starting in cold weather.
The heater fitment is terrible. The molded cable junction rubs on the starter housing since it does not have the 90 degree bend the OEM heater has. Running the cord in a direct line toward the grill gets within about 10 inches instead of reaching the light bezel as it should. Now I have to extend the cord and have a unnecessary junction in the engine compartment. One star is being generous!
Love it this winter. Colorado has had some cold nights and its great to get in my pickup and turn the heater on and enjoy warm air
Haven’t had a chance to use it yet but I came quickly and was a good price
It's a fairly tight place to get into on a Tacoma to install, but once the heater is installed, the fit is good and snug. The heater works great, I have heat coming through the vents less than 3 blocks from my house.
I would recommend this product to anyone.
Had to modify it to try and get this to fit as other people showed. Wouldn't fit and because it was modified it can't be returned. It would fit but you would be taking apart the engine cooling system because of rigid metal tubes and their brackets would have to be modified as its right infront of the hole, just to fit this into the slot of the block. Not worth the effort or time unless you want to pay a large amount of money to get someone to install it. Or if you have all the tools and a lift to install it yourself, since you will be going from underneath as well as above.
Well this item installed on my 2020 Toyota RAV4 did fit but it is not as easy as with earlier models and located on the front left hand side (down low) instead of on the right hand side bank. I used the factory block heater installation instructions as a guide but found some of the steps unnecessarily (for example removing the air box). In any case be prepared to do a lot of it by feel because you cannot see the hole it slides into in the block unless you use a mirror and flashlight. The installation process took me about 2 hours.
My Vehicle: 2021 Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road (4.0L 6cyl Auto)
This item is good quality but does not fit properly. It’s as if the circumference is a millimeter or two too-wide to fit in the engine block; it stopped itself maybe 3/4 of the way from a full install.
I bought this item before back in 2021 and had to remove my previous heating element due to it almost “melting” out of its socket because of the same issue I mentioned above; the clip would not secure no matter how hard I tried (“hammering” it in with a breaker bar *I made sure to not damage the electrodes* or even freezing it so the metal would hopefully shrink that extra millimeter or two).
Issue seriously needs to be resolved.
It did not fit the vehicle……don’t know why….
Installed this on my 2019 Toyota Tacoma. Haven’t really tested it out yet as I installed it before it got seriously cold. Installation was easy. Just follow etrailers super helpful video. I did have to file a slight flat on the heater to clear the bell housing overhang. Not a manufacturer issue on the heaters part. Just normal variance on Toyota’s end.
Fast acting and effective engine block heater
Received in excellent condition ahead of scheduled date... definitely recommend
Works great on my 09 Tacoma, takes about 6 hours to heat entire head and block to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit
Expensive shipping getting to canada(Quebec) but it was fast enough.
Part came as order and fits perfectly.
Got product in a timely manner.thanks
Easy installation once we found the hole in the engine block where it goes, that is the hard part. Worked fine last winter, have not needed it this year.
Fits like the factory one. The only issue I had is that the electrical cord is a bit on the short side. Other than that the heater works great.
Works great. Very happy with it.
You had a product that was very hard to get.
I live in northern Ontario, Canada. Average temp is -20 but has gone as low as -30/-35. This heater was installed in a 2016 Hyundai Elantra GLS 2.0 engine. Installation was easy once the battery box was removed. Slipped in the cavity real nice. The heater was plugged in for 4 hours at -20c. I then tested the engine for warmth. To my surprise the engine block was warm to the touch and the snow had a small circle on the hood where it started to melt. This surpassed my expectation, and I highly recommend this heater. Uses 350 watts per hr. That's less than a frost plug heater at 550 watts per hr. Shipping, packaging and instructions all great.
2015 Hyundai Sonata 2.4 install. Have to remove air intake, very tight to get it in just enough space. Had to trim a little bit to make it fit but nothing ever fits perfect. Picture say it all.
I cannot rate the product (which may be really fine) since there is no instructions given on installation so I'm stalled. Well the so called "instructions sheet" says to put the heater in the "cartridge" but doesn't give the slighlest idea where it is other than stating that for my car its situation is " LF" whatever that means.
Not on par with etrailer's business practices !
I installed this unit on my 2017 Tacoma when it had less than 10k on the odometer. Even with the engine bay clean and in like new condition, the heater was really difficult to install. The fit was really tight. I could not get it in the whole way and I did not want to tap on it with anything in fear of damaging the unit. With that said, it's in there and pretty much stuck. I have plugged it in during the cold months. When I fire up the truck in the morning getting ready to leave for work, I really can't tell if the Oil or Coolant are any warmer than if I didn't have the heater plugged in. Warm up times are about the same and the truck heater starts to warm up at the same time. I also don't know if it's ok to have the thing plugged in all night or if it should be on a timer. The instructions did not say. So all in all, For me I think it was a waste of money. The only thing it has done is spark up conversation when people see an extension cord plugged into the front of my truck. They say "I didn't know the new Tacoma came in a diesel?" Oh, one more thing. They sure could have made the electrical cord a few feet longer. I like doing a nice job of routing wires in my engine bay. The cord provided is so short you basically need to make a straight shot from your firewall to your grille.
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