[AT] engine heater

[Sewell, Steven]

Sounds like the heater is going bad. The plug should not get hot, a little warm maybe, but not hot to the touch. We have block heaters on the refueler trucks at work. They are pluged into ground fault breakers and work just fine. They have and will start tripping the breakers when they start going bad.

Steve Sewell
Albany, Ohio USA
sewell at ohio.edu
sewell at atis.net
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From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com [at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Al Walker [alwalker at gvtel.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2011 10:31 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: [AT] engine heater

Hi Folks,
I've got an engine block heater that trips my ground fault outlet.  I am not able to explain it to myself.  My understanding is that current should flow from one flat blade in the plug to the other. Alternating, of course.  In between those two flat blades in the plug is the heating element.  I did not think this would leak enough current to the ground wire to trip a ground fault breaker.  If I disconnect that ground wire, it seems to work, but the plug gets pretty hot.  Is this normal behavior for a resistor heating element?
Al in NW MN
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