Since I fitted the new “8kW” diesel heater to the camping power trolley, it has occurred to me that there is a lot of energy in the exhaust gas stream that ordinarily would be wasted into the atmosphere. Since we’re all still on lockdown here in the UK, I figured
Continue readingCovid-19 Lockdown Projects – Extracting Diesel Heater Exhaust Waste Heat
It recently became rather obvious there was something amiss with the water heater on board nb Tanya Louise – lots of smoke from the exhaust, failed starts, and finally a total refusal to start altogether. On disassembly, it was clear the burner was the issue – above. The mesh at
Continue readingWebasto Thermo Top C Burner Mesh Replacement
While I’m pretty happy with the Chinese diesel heater replacement for the old Eberspacher on the trolley, the stock controller leaves much to be desired. While functional, it’s fairly unresponsive, bulky & doesn’t allow external control as the Eberspacher did with it’s simple ON/OFF signal. So after a massive amount
Continue readingAfterburner Aftermarket Diesel Heater Controller Build
As part of the giant power bank that gets dragged to all my major camping trips & festivals, there is an old Eberspacher Diesel heater, a D1LCC from at first guess somewhere in the mid 90’s. At only 1.8kW heat output this is a little small for our current tent,
Since I do festivals every year, along with a couple of other camping trips if the weather is good enough, I’ve been taking equipment with me for years in flight cases to make things more comfortable. Things like a large battery to power lights & device charging, an old Eberspacher
Continue readingCamping Support Trolley – Some Build Progress
As I mentioned in the previous post, these heaters have a standard interface that’s used for control & diagnostics, the W-Bus. This is transmitted over the K-Line of the vehicle bus, and all heaters, regardless of firmware modifications done by the various car manufacturers respond to this interface. Official Webasto
Continue readingJaguar S-Type Aux Heater / Webasto Thermo Top V Part 2 – W-Bus Diagnostics
Here’s another Diesel-fired heater related project – these Webasto heaters are fitted to Jaguar S-Type cars as auxiliary heaters, since (according to the Jag manual), the modern fuel-efficient diesels produce so little waste heat that extra help is required to run the car’s climate control system. (Although this seems to
Continue readingJaguar S-Type Aux Heater / Webasto Thermo Top V Part 1 – Teardown & Cleaning
Some time ago I did a couple of posts on cheapening up the maintenance of Eberspacher hot air heaters by making the glow plug screens myself. Now one of my pieces of stainless mesh has been in the heater for nearly a year, and the heater is starting to get
Continue readingDIY Eberspacher Glowplug Screens: The Test Of Time
A while ago I posted about the glowplug screens in Eberspacher heaters, and making some DIY ones, as the OEM parts are hideously expensive for a piece of stainless mesh (£13). Above is the old factory screen that I extracted after only 5 gallons of diesel was run through it,
One of the central parts to the Eberspacher-type evaporative burner is the wire mesh screen that surrounds the glowplug, where the incoming fuel is heated to vapour before it’s blown into the combustion chamber & burned. These screens, like glowplugs in the older heaters, are consumable parts and either get
I go camping on a regular basis here in the UK, and often even in summer it’s horribly cold at night in a field somewhere in the middle of Leicestershire. This doesn’t go too well with my severe aversion to being cold. For the past several years I’ve used a