The official Chinese Diesel Heater thread (Webasto Knockoff)

[pinetreeporsche]

Flex Seal's clear spray seems like a good option. I've had limited experience with it, but more with some of their other products, and think highly of them.

[vwhammer]

The 8kw unit is also about 15x6x6 inches.

There are a couple of options with the conformal coating.

Ideally you will want to take the board out of the plastic as much as possible so you can cover as much of the board as possible.

As far as connections are concerned I would leave as many of those on as possible.

The more you can seal between the board and connections the better.

If you spray without the connections you will have to go through and scrape all of the pins so you get a good connection when you put the plug back on.

I would give the whole board a good covering then let it dry completely.
Then install the board back in its plastic housing.
I would then go back through with the coating and spray the connections again and let them dry without disturbing them.

This should give you the best chance to seal between the board and the connectors.

Try not to mess with the plugs too much after your coating is dry for the best chance of that seal not breaking.

[vwhammer]

Well built a quick and dirty stand for my garage heater and it appears to work just fine.

Took me a minute to get enough air out of the fuel filter that they give you so actual fuel would flow but I managed.

Has anyone opened their two button remote yet.
My friends remote looks like the 2 button but has an extra pair of buttons on the outside.
Mine just has the two on the outside.
I opened mine to put a battery in it and it has two extra buttons inside.

I wonder if you could just punch a couple holes and actually adjust the temp from the remote as well as turn it on and off.

Just short of some connectors I am only waiting on one more part for my portable 2kw build and I will start drawing all of that up.

The hope is to make the 2kw build more like a production unit.
Have not decided what material it will be but I will likely draw a bunch and have several parts laser cut and some brackets bent up.
Who knows.

If I had known more what I wanted to do and had I not found such a deal on the 2kw heater I probably would have just bought one of the complete portable heater units that are available.
Would have saved a lot of time.
In the end I will probably have just as much money in this heater as I would have buying one of the complete units.

Oh well I guess I will just have to try real hard to make mine cooler, figuratively speaking.

[vwhammer]

Ooooooo!
Another quick update.
I had not noticed these on ebay before but apparently you can just buy the empty case for those complete stand alone heaters.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Air-Diesel-Heater-Red-Iro...rk:34:pf:0

I may just get one of these and forego all the fab work on the heater part of the 2kw build.

Maybe do a few things to waterproof it and call it done.
Then all I have to fab is the battery/charger case.

EDIT: Ha! just noticed that in one of the pics for that item the foot part appears to be already be damaged.
That's always promising.

[tristessa]

UPS showed up this morning with two of the four metal-shelled "8KW" units I ordered on 11/29 .. wonder where the other two are. Shipped air freight to Vancouver, BC and re-shipped UPS from there.

I put "8KW" in quotes because they're 5KW units and clearly labeled as such .. which was what was expected at the time of ordering. Near as anyone can find there are no 8KW units, just 5KW's with extremely creative measuring/marketing techniques.

[dhaavers]

^^^ 8KW metric = 5KW SAE...???



- Dave
_________________
86 White Wolfsburg Westy Weekender
"The WonderVan"
<EDITED TO PROTECT INNOCENT PIXELS>

[vwhammer]

Well my "8kw" unit says 5kw-8kw on the side and I assumed that meant 5kw on low and 8kw on high but who am I to say.

I suppose its possible that they do not put out 8kw and it's just as possible that they do but without proper testing we can not say.

I suppose with a few careful measurements of the fuel pump volume, a couple other measurements and some math you could quickly determine whether it is even possible for it to put out 8kw.

Bottom line is that they put out heat and should work just fine for a van maybe not so much for a garage.

The 5 and 8 kw heaters are physically much bigger than the 1-2kw unit so its only natural to assume that they put out more heat and use a bit more fuel.

I would just pick the little body unit for small spaces and the big body unit for bigger spaces.

Until there are some real numbers its all just going to boil down to trial and error for now.

Either way, knowing that they actually put out heat and cost 3-5 times less than the name brand units, I would probably take a chance and order them again if I needed one.

[tristessa]

Fuel consumption, current draw and dimensional specs I've seen online for the "8KW" units are identical to the 5KW heaters, so unless they've magically figured out how to get more energy from the same amount of fuel .. they're either exaggerating or outright lying. And since 5KW is PLENTY for a Bus, Vanagon or Eurrovan (even the EV-based Winnebago Rialta), really it's just amusing to me to see that people get so worked up over the subject.

Even 5KW is possibly optimistic, given that they're clones of the AIrtronic D4 which is "only" a 4KW heater...

[tristessa]

Other two showed up this morning. One box had a corner blow open in transit and was missing the fuel tank fitting and duct outlet, all others had all parts present and accounted for. Two have been checked for screw and glow plug tightness -- this has been an issue with some heaters lately -- and bench-run on kerosene, need to test the other two tomorrow.

[Italjohn]

Got my diesel heater today.
Had to make an "first impression" video of it
Links to the heater in the video description.
OBS: This heater is mislabeled to 2kw, but it's really a 5kw!!


Link

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[AZ Landshaper]

Thanks man. Apparently they dont inventory the parts before shipping. Cant wait to see that thing running in your Vanagon. Keep us posted.
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85 Weekender w/ EJ22
Previously
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and a 67 bug.

[tristessa]

[tristessa]

[crazyvwvanman]

The reason is because those larger VW fitted heaters you mention were intended to be the primary heat while the vehicle was being driven in very cold weather. What people are talking about now is what size does the job while parked or camped. I have a 2.8kw propane unit, too much heater considering it comes with a larger physical size that won't fit in places I would like it to while a smaller heater does fit.

Mark

[vwhammer]

The reason I assumed the 5kw would be too big is because there are several youtube vids of people with the 5kw units installed in much bigger vans and campers that say it's too much.
They end up running them on low most of the time.
As has been mentioned, running on low a lot can lead to build up issues.
I thought maybe running a smaller unit on high would help prevent the build up.

Of course giving the heaters a good blast on high for a few minutes before shut down may also help.

I also saw some crappy vid the other day where someone used a diesel injector cleaner or fuel treatment of some sort occasionally to try to help with soot issues.

That might be something to think about as well.

[crazyvwvanman]

I'll be curious to see where people manage to permanently mount these things in the Westy and other model vans. I have put a small Eberspacher in the Westy water tank cab "hidden" spot. The 2kw Chinese heater I just got is slightly smaller than the Eberspachers I have so it should fit in the same space ok, I think.

Mark

[tristessa]

[vwwestyman]

I don't know for sure about these heaters, though it sounds like the functioning is very similar.

But for my Espar, as a part of the wiring harness there is a yellow "turn on" signal wire. From my experimenting, it seems that this wire simply needs 12v to tell the heater's little computer to turn on. My heater will then seemingly run at whatever temperature the thermostat was last set at.

So what I did was install my control switch with thermostat in the upper right corner of the Westy cabinet, near where many others have done.

I then tapped into that "turn on" signal wire, and ran a wire up front. At the moment, that wire is provided power by the mostly worthless rear defrost switch. When I have a little time, I will change it so it is powered by a BN4 switch, just because I think that'll be neat.

I think at least part of the discussion on size depends on how and where you plan to use the Van. For example, if you are going to use it top down and/or not super freezing temps, then the smaller one is likely fine. If you are going to be in really cold temps and also want the top up, then you'll probably be happy for the extra heat of the bigger one!
_________________
Dave Cook

President, Wild Westerner Club

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

[vwwestyman]

Also, if you ended up with a big one and were concerned about running it on low too often, you could always plan an occasional "Italian Tune Up" of the heater by blasting it on high occasionally, even with a window or two open or something if needed, I guess, to blow out any carbon.

Even the old Eberspacher BN4 and BA6 heaters' manuals advised running them at least once a month to keep em going. Think of it like that.
_________________
Dave Cook

President, Wild Westerner Club

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

[tristessa]