BA6 Gas Heater rebuild

[badassdubs]

Picked this up at the wreckers a few weeks ago and decided to get it running. There were french fries in the heater oulet so a rodent of some sort had been living in there. Pulled the combustion air blower out and found the nest. Pulled all of that out and proceeded to fire it up. No fuel, intermitent spark. Pulled the combustion air blower back out and pulled it apart. The points that fire the fuel pump were not conducting electricity so I filed them down and now it has fuel. Started it back up and waited. The safety switch will shut it down if it doesn't ignite within 4 minutes and at about 3:30 it bellowed. Alot of black smoke. So I shut it down and pulled the spark plug/glow plug out and I had no spark. Put a normal spark plug on the the end of the plug wire and turned the switch on and the plug was firing so I knew the old one was bad. Ordered a new one from german supply. Put the new one in and it fired right up and works like a charm. While I was waiting for the spark plug to arrive I decided to pull it apart, sand blast it and the powder coat it so that the rust would no longer be an issue. Also I was concerned what else might be inside.

A very thin coating of what appeared to be rtv.

Couldnt powder coat this without melting things so I blasted it and painted it.

Powder coated and waiting for heat.

And finished.

Notice the rust pits. It appears that the casings are steel with a zinc coating on them. When sand blasted it pulls the coating up some what where the rust spots were. Then I sanded those down and it exposed more rust. Sand blasted again to clean up the rust. Very strange. If I wouldn't have done this the casings would have completely rusted through in time.

Riveted the baffles back in with solid rivets.

Thin coating of rtv and it is ready to assemble.

And a short vid of the finished product. Now I just need to finish the vanagon.


Link

[Mark]

Sweet, stock heating porn! That is just excellent work & attention to detail.

[Phishman068]

So you are adding this to a van that did not have it from the factory?
Is this by chance a water cooled van?
I'd like to do a similar thing to my winter van.

[ragnarhairybreeks]

God I love posts like this one, even if I don't have what is being repaired. Great stuff.

Alistair
_________________
'86 7 passenger syncro, converted to westy pop top, project still in progress
'82 westy, diesel converted to gas in '94, now gone...
https://shufti.blog/
Old address still works...
http://shufti.wordpress.com

[badassdubs]

[badassdubs]

Picked this up saturday. Now the addition is complete. I am posting this because the WHY???? thread has pushed this one into oblivian. ROFLMAO