Review: Engine Start Made Easy with ProTek RC Engine Heater

This article was originally published in RC Driver’s April 2015 issue.

Using an engine heater is quickly becoming the norm on the nitro racing scene. By preheating your engine before start-up and runs, you allow the engine to start easier with less wear and tear. It also allows you to get the engine to proper running temperatures at the beginning of the race rather than later so tuning is also easy. ProTek RC has released a great engine heater to do all that. The heater is an adjustable, high temp fabric cap for your engine head with a flap on top to access the glow plug. Inside the cap is a heating element that heats up when powered by a 12V power source. There is an inline control board with start button that when depressed starts a 10 minute safety timer that will shut the heater off when time has elapsed. An LED on the board lets you know the heater is operating. To test it, we simply plugged in an 11.1V 4100mAh Eco Power LiPo from AMain.com, slipped the heater on an engine head and pushed the start button. After a few minutes we pulled the cover from the head and temped the heating element. It was well over 400 degrees! That’s hot, so be careful handling it, but more importantly for your engine is that it heats it up quickly thanks to these hot temps. A warm engine is a happy engine on start-ups. The engine heater does the job and does it well; we love the timer safety feature, too.