My veggie oil/ bunker fuel system requires heated fuel filters.
Heated fuel filters average over $200.
For $15 a piece I can get a plain-jane metal head to thread fuel filters on.
So, the way I look at it, I have $185 to fabricate a water jacket around my plain-jane mounts.
The mounting heads are about an inch thick, three inches in diameter; they have a circle that the media seals against and then they have a 1/2 inch inlet and outlet from either side. Somehow I need to rigidly mount these things in an enclosure in such a way that I can easily replace the filters, but still have anti-freeze circulating around them when I'm driving.
My current thought is to mount the heads in one end of a sealed pipe, with the filter media pointing down the middle. Then coil an engine coolant line around the side of the pipe, around the media. The coil extends down to about 2 inches from the bottom of the media. Then, threaded to that sealed pipe end is another sealed pipe end. So I have a pipe sealed at both ends; the top is rigidly mounted to my fender, and the bottom of the pipe unscrews to reveal the bottom 2 inches of the filter media. In order to promote better heat transfer from the heater coil to the media, I can tap a port into the top of the pipe and fill it full of water whenever I change the filter.
So my idea is complicated. Any takers on a better idea? Not really offended if not, I'm just suffering from insomnia and random neural firings at the moment... Maybe I'll draw a blue print...