It gets cold here in the winter, when I was commuting to work it would take a few miles to start getting any kind of heat, once on the highway it warmed up but still didn't have much heat, when it's 10° and the needle hasn't moved much in 7miles it gets frustrating. And that's with a 10min idle at home.
Today at 43° it takes 8 minutes for the needle to move slightly.
I've always had a problem with heat, if after running around town and stopping to idle a bit the coolant would drop down to 120° and barley any heat, I'd have to raise the rpms too 1500rpm to get the heat up.
Pan heater won't work since there's really no flat spot and its just not effective enough. Block heater won't work due to not many freeze plugs, the only one I found was the one behind the exhaust manifold and I have to way to properly measure it without taking the manifold off.
I was thinking of just running some corrugated flexible pipe around the manifold a few times or maybe just over the top of it in a few rows and tying to the manifold. Once the car is warmed up the thermostat should take over and keep things cool. If that isn't sufficient enough there's always header wrap to help insulate the pipe.