want a good brand of lower radiaror hose heater kit

[massey777]

my tractor is a massey 1540, 3 cyl iseki diesel. iv heard the katz heaters are lucky to last a season. what are my other good picks? im due for a new battery soon, how many cold cranking amps would you buy & are there a couple good brand of batteries for tractors? all info is greatly appreciated

 

[George2615]

I installed a Katz lower hose in line heater on my Mahindra 2615 HST when I bought it in 2004. It was still working well when I sold it in 2014. I used it every winter and it would heat the radiator antifreeze up to 140* in about 2 hours and made for easy starts. Maybe the one you heard about failing was a fluke. Not everything or part lasts forever.
When I replaced my battery I bought the largest CCA battery in my battery group size that would fit in the battery case. I got it at Advance Auto Parts. There are lots of good battery mfg. to choose from.

 

[RickB]

Katz or Zerostart. Both are good brands, any manufacturer will have a few random early failures.

 

[Sportsman762]

Zerostart hands down. I work for a company that use to sell Katz, we had double digit returns on the heaters (slightly over 80% are good, the rest are junk). The quality control is not there. With the Phillips Temro Zerostart heaters we have less then a 1% fail rate on the couple thousand we sell a year. I would never put a Katz in a machine that I own.