Grumpy

   I have been swayed, pardon the pun. Here's the long story. I wanted to be able to take my NT254 places. I also wanted to be able to run out and rescue family members with broken down cars. What presented itself just recently was that I bought a car that was undriveable, so I figured it was time to make a decision. UHaul however wouldn't rent me a trailer to haul it home. My immediate reaction was that I decided Thursday that I would simply take the gamble, buy a trailer after work on Friday, and do it anyway. I still had reservations though, because I have seen articles about towing that say to make sure the trailer can handle it, make sure the hitch can handle it, make sure the towing capacity of the vehicle can handle it, and don't exceed the weight of the towing vehicle. After talking to a few guys at work yesterday regarding the weight of their trucks though, I was surprised at how light the Ranger is compared to other trucks that don't seem that much bigger to me than the Ranger. I decided instead to rent a truck and trailer, haul the new car home, hook the loaded trailer up to the Ranger and take it for a test drive. Well, the tongue weight of the trailer was a bit much. There wasn't enough ground clearence left under the tongue to safely exit my driveway onto the county highway. I also noticed while driving the rented truck and trailer with my car on it that the hydraulic brakes on the trailer really didn't seem to do much of anything untill I was braking hard, which made me even more nervous. I did take it up and down my driveway a few times testing braking. I then positioned it right at the end of the driveway, where I have a considerable but no steeper incline than I have seen on certain public roads in the area, to see how it handled starting out on an incline. It did it, but I smelled smells that I've never smelled from that truck before so I think the automatic transmission with 150K miles on it wasn't too happy about it. So I never left the driveway. All that, combined with your posts, tipped the scales. I ain't gonna' buy a trailer until I get a bigger truck first. Thanks for your input!

   Interesting. The original glow plugs have “10.5V” stamped on the side of them and measure 0.5 ohms resistance cold, theoretically drawing 24A. The replacement plugs have “12V” stamped on them, measure 2.0 ohms, and seem to draw about 6A. So 3 of the replacement plugs would only draw 18A and the original Jinma 30A fuse would handle that. I am now wondering if those original glow plugs were the wrong ones.  Anyway, I left the one working original in place and replaced the 2 dead ones with new 6A ones. This morning at 27F degerees I hit the glow plugs for 15 seconds and she fired right up.  Now I am waiting for some really cold temperatures, which seems to be in short supply this winter, and will see what happens but so far the results are very promising!

   By the way, many thanks to Circle G for fast turn around on parts!

    Well, I've settled on my final solution. First of all, although my goal is that of the ability to start at 0F without assistance from the local power grid, I will continue to use the 1100W block heater when I don't mind waiting 15 minutes. This is in agreement with Bob's post stating that 'starting an ice cold engine' is not really prefered unless necessary. I do not intend to start without preheating on a regular basis, I just want to be completely confident that I can if I need to.

    I played around with the Thermostart idea used on a lot of Ford, Kubota, JD, and Massey tractors. Although the device worked as advertised on a test bench, I ran into a couple issues when trying to apply it to my Jinma 284. First issue was that the things require a small reservouir of diesel fuel at least 4″ above the device. That was hard to achieve using the existing location of the side port on the elbow above the intake manifold on mine. There is only about 6″ or 8″ from there to the inside of the hood. I did not wish to go so far as to remove the intake manifold and create a new port just for this which would have been lower and probably more effective. Another issue was that, when mounted in the port on the Jinma, the thing is pretty much encased in a pipe that isn't much larger in diameter that the device itself. It didn't want to light up nearly as easily as it did out in the open, I think maybe it needs more room to breathe. I also read a post where someone suggested, what seems logical to me, that burning diesel fuel inside the intake to heat up the air also consumes the oxygen! I gave up on the Thermostart device.    
    I went back to the hair dryer/ heat gun idea. The hair dryer was overkill. There is a threaded fitting in the intake manifold for connection to the crankcase ventilation breather hose from the valve cover. I replaced it with a hose barb that has an ID large enough to accept my heat gun with a little attachment stuck on it's nose that focusses the heat into a 3/8″ diameter stream. In the event that I ever need to start without pre-heating I can pull off the PCV hose, slip the nose of the heat gun into that barb, dial the heat gun back to 220 degrees so I don't hurt anything, plug it into the power inverter mounted above my head to the underside of the canopy, run the heat gun for 30 seconds, crank the engine with compression released to get some hot air into the cylinders and get the oil pressure up, let the heat gun run another 30 seconds, and fire it up. It works really good. Not as convenient as having all the pieces permanently mounted to the tractor, but it should do very well for the few times I will ever have to use it.