Installing a Cheap Chinese Diesel Parking Heater

[thomas.]

I have a BN4 eberspacher I installed a few years ago that could never keep up with the drafty bus. So I re used that hole. It sits a little loose there but works good.The warm air comes up and hits me in the back of my head and warms the front of the bus. It's right at the same level as the heater on the floor.I'm on a tablet computer now and don't have access to photos or would include. The fuel tank is in the back closet and the fuel pump in the front one with the fuel line running outside and up to the heater.When I cut the holes for the intake & exhaust I made two separate holes just big enough to get the pipes through and didn't use any insulation if anyone is interested. Some photos...The top photo is when the BN4 eberspacher is installed. I can still use it. Just unplug the diesel and plug in the elec. connection at the same spot. i still have to change a few things like the bolts on the tank and I have a smaller tank.

[captincanuck]

[captincanuck]

Some install picks

DIY mounting plate

Heat outlet running under the fridge

Propane tank converted into diesel tank

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1979 Westfalia "FireFly" Subaru 2.2 with Subaru gears 5spd.
Build Thread: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=634777&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

[thomas.]

[quote="captincanuck"]Some install picks

Good looking install. Regarding your LED controller. I purchased an identical controller separately for my 2kw. My question , does the backlight stay on after you shut your heater down like the older model controller. If not I was thinking of switching this out for the 5kw I have in my bus.

[captincanuck]

[Daverham]

You guys have been busy while I have been out in the garage!

I finally got all the fiddly little parts and just got the thing fired up for the first time. It works! Hot, dry, odorless air in the bus for the first time ever, with the engine running or not! With thermostat and timer control for camping, etc. This is the dream.

I have SO MUCH to report back about this process, parts, installation etc. And I have a lot of work I need to do (like real, paying work), so I'm going to keep this short for now. More info and photos later.

For now, some big-picture thoughts on the location:

• I installed the unit under the floor, outside. It’s tucked up between the main frame rails as high as it can go. It hangs down maybe 1 inch below the rails. That’s fine. In 10 years, I’ve never hit my frame on anything - and that was with a 2.5 inch lower job. My bus (lifted back up to stock height and with bigger tires is now a solid 3 inches higher than before). So I’m content that it will never strike the ground or even come close. So it’s just about dead center on the floor any way you measure it, maybe slightly forward of that.

• I had to stretch my factory heat duct a bit and curve it to the side to make room for this, it was no problem. I clamped it to a pipe which was in my bench vise, pulled it a bit and re-installed it. Easy to do and I didn’t have to disconnect or take-over my factory defrosters which still work great while driving.

• I was adamant about ducting the warm cabin air output into one of the factory floor vents (the one between the seat, behind the walkthrough). There’s a nice 2.5-inch-or-so hole in the forward lateral frame brace, so I wanted to use that to put my duct right through there and into the factory vent. Not a fan of having my ducting dip below the frame at all.

• Finally, the combustion intake and exhaust ports on these things are situated at a 90-degree relationship to the glow plug (which is supposed to be located at the top of the heater) so all these things together presented a real puzzle with regard to where on/in the bus to locate the bugger and left me with no real alternatives that didn’t have their own problems. Oh and I didn’t want it in the engine cabin due to noise while sleeping. That’s right under the bed! So that’s why it is where it is.

• I should add that - after finally hearing it run for the first time - it might not have been that bad in the engine compartment. It's not very loud. The air coming out of the vent is the loudest part (WHOOSH!), so that's inside the bus no matter what you do, and that's a comforting white-noise kind of sound to me. You can barely hear the unit/heater/fan itself. Maybe that's because I put it outside! But I bet that the factory location inside the engine bay would be OK as well, even for an OCD person like myself who can't stand noises when I'm sleeping.

I’m happy with the location. You can’t see it AT ALL - not any part of it - from outside the vehicle, unless you get down on your hands and knees and stick your head under there. And it checks all the boxes above. Done.

More about the little challenges and solutions later.

And I’m just going to repeat this pretty much all day long… if you are installing one of these things, I HIGHLY recommend joining the facebook group and reading up. There is a LOT going on in these little units. No matter where you put it, it’s going to be a custom job and there’s a lot of opportunity to do something that won’t work well with regard to temperature, angles, backpressure, overheating, fault-codes, etc etc etc. Save yourself the trouble and read up a bit first. The kit looks pretty staright forward: wires, pipes, ducts, etc. But there’s more going on than you might at first realize.

Also, I realize that the exhaust and the fresh-air intake are too close together here in this photo. I've already added a longer exhaust pipe to move that a couple feet further back - it just wasn't done yet for the photo.

That reminds me, one final thought about this before I get back to work: The hardest part of this was twofold: 1, figuring out where to put it and 2. Having to order or go pickup lots and lots of little parts from the hardware store, eBay and Amazon. The kit was complete, but to do it the way I did it you need more ducting, clamps, reducers, fittings, bolts, couplings, pieces of steel, etc. Lots of little stuff, running back and forth, ordering, waiting, etc. That's what made this take 3+ weeks. Only working on it 15 minutes at a time and then waiting 4 days for a chance to go get a bigger clamp...

[notchboy]

[danfromsyr]

sorry to say that chinese heaters almost have to be quieter than the BN4 rocket launcher VW mounted in the engine compartments.

[notchboy]

[Daverham]

Yesterday I took the bus out for a few errands, test the heater etc. Great. All good. It got damn HOT in there. I had to open the front fresh-air vent.

It wasn't raining, but the roads were wet from an earlier rain. When I got back home, I peeked under there and saw some water spray on the heater unit, ducts, all around.

The instructions that come with the heater kit specify that it shouldn't be splashed with water, so I made a splash pan. I had intended to do this anyway, but the test drive made it more urgent.

I had a big sheet of steel laying around, so made it out of that. It was pretty darn easy, cut it, bend it, weld on some screw tabs. Great. I'll paint/undercoat it some other time.

[OG Velvet]

For the LCD controllers that stay on full time... Will simply unplugging the controller keep it from slowly draining the battery? I have a second battery, but I have not installed the aux battery relay yet. I'm plugging the second battery into a trickle charger at night.
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'67 13 Window
'77 Westy
'69 Sunroof Beetle
'65 Honda Dream

[Daverham]

Seems like that would do the trick. I also think it's a pretty minimal draw to power that tiny little console so you could probably just leave it on for a very long time without problems.

And there are also other controllers that you can get and interchange them, there's a knob-style one that would look good in an old bus.

I guess they have a sly little LED on the side that will blink error codes, etc. Pretty cool. I like the look a lot better than the big, light-up LCD console.

Check it out. Dirt cheap too:

I'm probably going to get one of those and I'm also going install a main/power shut-off toggle switch and just turn the whole thing off when I'm not using it.

[Daverham]

I just came here to say that i've been using the heater for a few days now and I LOVE IT.

I love the wireless key-fob switch that lets you pre-heat your bus from inside the house (or from the bed in the back or from the camp fire....). I didn't really expect to use that but I'm already finding that it's very nice.

I also got a fancy-pants CO detector and have been monitoring that. No carbon monoxide from the parking heater! But when I turned on my factory defrosters it beeped and registered 22PPM. So I guess I have to fix an exhaust leak back there someplace. But that's another issue. The parking heater is not bringing any CO into the bus, sitting still or while driving. So that's good to know.

More installation details to follow, but for now, work is really busy...

[71whitewesty]

I really like your set up on this. It looks like the way to go for me. Thanks for documenting it all here and at some point I will refer back and copy it.
(Still might haul a generator for occasional use this year though, feeling lazy I guess ).
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71 Westy 1600 DP, all stock Bus 1
1970's Snow Trac 1600 SP (sold 12/2016)
1968 Tucker sno cat, sold 2021
1969 Tucker Sno cat 542
2017 VW Alltrac
71 tin top stock 1600 DP (project but runs)
Twin 71 White Westy, Bus 2, that I pulled from a 15 year slumber in a dry eastern WA field in 2015.
1966 Sundial Camper "Boomer"

[vwwestyman]

I feel like there must be some kind of module I could buy that I could send a text to from anywhere, that could then be used to turn the heater on. At least assuming the heater, somewhere in it's harness, has a simple "turn on" wire like my Espar does. I've even figured that I could probably attach such a device to the correct wire on my old BN4 or BA6 heaters and make them run, too.

But with all my googling abilities, the best I'm coming up with is pages on connecting smart phones to new car's interfaces and such.

Anyone know what on earth I'm talking about?
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Dave Cook

President, Wild Westerner Club

1978 Champagne Edition Westy, repowered to '97 Jetta TDI
1973 Wild Westerner
My Thing

[notchboy]

[vwwestyman]

[notchboy]

[vwwestyman]

[vwwestyman]

Oh, yeah. Since I have my BA6 installed in the '73, I don't think the clock timer would match!
_________________
Dave Cook

President, Wild Westerner Club

1978 Champagne Edition Westy, repowered to '97 Jetta TDI
1973 Wild Westerner
My Thing