I was just looking at these online, and was wondering if anybody had any experience with them? It makes alot more sense to me to have preheated oil than it does to have preheated coolant.

 

I've read about people using these heaters on trucks and cars and are very pleased with them. I've not heard specifically about wolverine heaters, mostly Kat's (because they are cheaper) and Proheat Amazon.com: proheat: Automotive. At some point in the future, I'm going to put one on the transmission of my ford and my toyota.

 

Yea, I was thinking about possibly the trans as well, but at this point, I'm toying with the idea of switching to a 6sp It just seemed to me from the instructions for application that I read for all the ones I could find, these ones seemed to be very comprehensive, and appears to come with just about everything that you would need to install. May have to pull the trigger on one of these

 

I put one on my Cummins when the block heater quit and it didn't help out one bit with cold starts. I was told by a heavy equipment guy they done tests on some equipment with the coolant heaters and oil pan heaters. He said the coolant heaters "heat" spreads farther throughout the engine. And the pan heaters basically just heated the pan with barely any going up into the engine. I would like to try one on a trans though. My 6.0 doesnt like cold trans fluid at all.

 

The oil heater would be nice in extremely LOW temps when using petro based oils because they get get "thicker" when they are cold. I believe that isnt as much the case if your running a good synthetic.
Regardless you should still run the block heater. IT is what (as bluetj said) actually helps with cold starting. The engine is nice and warm making it easier to fire our compression ignition engines. Plus all the parts inside dont expand all crazy from being 3* then going to epic temps in the combustion process in a matter of minutes. Could be a life saver for a 53 block?? Just a thought..