Block heater cord routing

casm · **Joined:** Sun Jan 29, 2006 5:05 pm **Posts:** 694

After reading through a few older threads on the topic (many of which haven't seen posts in years), I figured I'd start a new one to describe how I routed the stock engine block heater cord on our '05 CRD. Winter's coming, so hopefully this is of some help to anyone trying to do the same thing.

Inspection of the block heater cord showed that it was in surprisingly good shape with no cracks or breaks in the insulation, so I decided to go ahead with using it. There's no way of telling if there are any internal breaks, but I'll find out when I go check on it in an hour or so - having only been plugged-in for about 20 minutes, nothing's really had time to warm up yet.

Apologies for the lack of photos - my phone didn't cope well with some of the tight, dark, difficult-to-get-focus-in spaces involved, so I'm just going to do my best to clearly describe how everything was routed.

Things you'll probably want to have to hand: a coathanger to prod / fish things with and some zip-ties for securing the block heater cord.

Start by locating the block heater cord and removing the tie-wraps that are likely bundling it. Press the tabs in towards the loop to release them, or just cut them off, taking care to not damage the insulation on the cord in the process. Next, remove the plug cover from the plug end and set it aside; you'll want it later.

Route the cord towards the front of the vehicle, running it between the battery and the cables coming off of the negative post of the battery.

Look straight down at the space between the battery and the fuse box next to the battery. You should see a square-ish hole. Drop the block heater plug down into there; with a little wiggling on the cord, it should pop out towards the front of the vehicle and underneath the fuse box.

Now move around to the front. Look straight down at the left (driver's side for LHD vehicles) headlamp. Immediately to its right should be an open vertical space with a couple of cables visible inside. You want to get the plug into the bottom of that space. This can be done without having to route the cord above where it's coming out from underneath the battery tray.

This is where your coathanger is going to come in handy. Look through the grille towards the left headlamp. You should see a plastic section with an open gap at the bottom of it. If you're really lucky, you'll see part or all of the plug. Use your coathanger to finagle the plug through that space; you may have to do this from both sides of the plastic section.

Once you've got the plug fished into the space in front of the radiator, use your coathanger to bring it up to the grille. Provided that you removed the rubber cover from the plug, you should be just able to squeeze it through the vertical slats on the grille without snapping them.

Reattach the plug cover, using its loop to secure the plug down to one of the horizontal grille slats.

Go back and zip-tie down the heater cord, keeping two things in mind: one, you want to keep it away from anything likely to damage it or be conductive if the insulation should break; two, you should leave some slack in it to allow for engine movement. I used the battery positive cabling from the branch nearest the battery terminal and one part of the left-hand-side headlight cabling for this; YMMV.

Total time to do this is about 20 minutes. Also, I'd recommend removing the plug cover and pushing the plug back through the grille if you're going to run through an automatic car wash; there's a good chance that if brushes, etc. snagged it you could end up with grille damage.

Block heater cord routing

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