Couple of days updates rolled into one here as I ran out of time to write them up on the days.
The new heater for the van started out as all the best projects do as a box of bits.
The teeny tiny silencer for the exhaust pleases me far more than it probably should for some reason...though I do have some doubts as to its efficacy...
While I forgot to get any photos, first thing I did of course given that this was a China special was to take it apart to make sure there wasn't any corrective work needed. Sure enough there was. The fan was fouling on its housing to the extent that it was totally jammed. I'm not entirely sure whether this was due to the fan getting shoved further onto the shaft if the thing has taken a knock in shipping...or if the nearby bracket had never been pushed fully home. Either way...two minutes, a large screwdriver to act as a lever and some brute force resolved that.
The heater in the living area of the van lives in the locker under the sofa. The old one is gas fired, but doesn't work. The fan runs, but it never fires. It's a Truma unit which seems reasonably well respected. Probably just needs a good clean and service...but to be honest an oil fired one probably makes more sense given that I've got a 70 litre tank of diesel on board. Makes it a lot easier to just turn the heat on without first having to make sure I've got gas on board, run outside to turn the reg on etc...Here's what we started with.
Plus the little control box... seemingly positioned to take up the absolute maximum amount of space.
The control unit was removed first. Thankfully everything just plugs into it so I didn't have to worry about anything being hard wired together.
The only things other than the gas supply line holding the actual heater in place are four self tapping screws into the floor. Two minutes later it was out.
This just left the little combined breather/flue assembly screwed into the floor.
...Which was then also removed.
Just leaving the thermostat, which is just screwed to the wall by a couple of tiny self tappers hidden behind the dial.
With all that lot out of the way it was time to start getting ready to install the new hardware...The first real step there being to make the hole in the floor a bit bigger as the new heater has a separate intake and exhaust rather than the combined assembly on the old one.
Before getting the jigsaw out though I had a peek underneath to make sure I wasn't going to go and do something daft...you know like cut straight into the top of the fuel tank, through brake lines or anything like that.
Nope...Plenty of room to play with. Especially as I only needed a couple of extra inches inboard. Like so.
Scruffy job to be fair, but I'm under no illusions that I won't be revisiting this job at a later date as I want to totally rearrange things in this locker as it wastes a lot of space. Plus the wiring is just plain UGLY. I'll probably flip the heater around 180 degrees and move it towards the wall back nearer to where the mains cabling comes through the wall.
Anyhow...for now let's get the thing in and working.
I figured that it would be way easier to get the baseplate fitted and to attached the air intake and exhaust lines before taking things outside rather than in the sea of debris strewn all over the floor in the van.
Then dropped the heater in place...glad to see my measurements were correct, leaving about 3/4" clearance around both the intake and exhaust.
Getting the fuel line back up through the hole would have been far easier if I'd just done it from underneath the van...but it was tipping it down, so instead had a right faff of a time trying to get the blasted thing to co-operate.
Fuel pump added (it will probably wind up in a padded box in due course to the clicking doesn't drive everyone mad)...
Intake and exhaust lines are just dangling under the van, but this won't get in the way of a test run.
Oh...and electricity would be useful for a test too. To be honest you can't really go wrong in that regards with this system. You've got a red wire and a black wire...everything else just plugs in and the connectors are all different so you can't connect things wrong.
I had kind of hoped to fit the new thermostat/controller in the place of the original...however that was not to be. The connector on the wiring won't fit past a batten just behind the panel it needs to run behind. So just went for a spot on the face of the locker for now.
Went for this location so it should still be possible to reach the controls while in bed.
While it's not currently producing heat due to a lack of a fuel supply (that's one of the jobs for tomorrow), it has now been test run up to the point it complained about a lack of fuel.
Couple of observations at this point:
1. It is waaaaaay quieter than the old unit. Mostly just the noise of the air actually being moved rather than obvious fan noise.
2. Power draw. The documentation states that the maximum running power draw is 40W. Yeeeeeaaahh...About that. This may be the case once the unit is up and running, but it pulls a hell of a lot more than 40W when the glow plug is energised during starting. Digging further through the manual reveals one tiny paragraph which mentions that the starting current may be up to 12A. This will be getting its own dedicated feed to the leisure battery as the existing wiring gets worryingly warm during startup and shutdown!
The clamp meter was brought in, showing 13A...so yeah, I think it's going to be wise to route a dedicated feed to the leisure battery. Which also gives the opportunity to add a switch...which I need as something the controller on this thing lacks is an "off" mode. The controller is by far the biggest limiting factor on these heaters...to the extent that there's an open source project created by a gentleman over in Australia called the Afterburner. This both addresses some of the drawbacks with the original controller and introduces quite a lot of additional functionality. Not least being able to properly switch the thing off! One really fun feature of that actually is the ability to control it remotely...so it's quite possible to turn the heater on from the warmth of the house and have a nice toasty van waiting for you on a horrible rainy winter morning.
This is where part 1 of this project came to a close as I ran out of time...so jumping forward now to day 2...
Things started efficiently enough, getting the new power feed directly to the leisure battery fitted. That was easy enough, though I need to empty the locker so I can neatly clip it in down one side.
The next step however involved not a small amount of faffing about and getting not one but two mouthfuls of diesel. The issue was that I couldn't get the fuel pump for the heater to prime for love nor money.
Eventually I tried with a cup of fuel propped as high up in the van as I could get it...at which point the issue became blindingly obvious.
With a gravity feed involved, fuel was pouring out of the seam between the two halves of the casing...no wonder I couldn't get the thing to prime!
With the dodgy fuel filter taken out of the equation the fuel pump primed without further drama. Wish I'd spotted that earlier as I wouldn't still be tasting diesel at this point if I'd figured it out earlier...
With that messing around out of the way we were ready to try actually firing it up properly. Oh...after a quick check underneath to make absolutely sure that the fuel line wasn't touching the exhaust as that had been positioned blind from inside the van.
I'll be going back in there with some reflective foil tape to line the floor around the hole to protect it as far as possible from the heat, and the hole around the fuel line will be sealed with Sikaflex (not doing the baseplate itself yet as I do want to move it at a later date). Not too worried about the lack of a grommit given it won't be able to move once it's sealed...and it's marine hose which is nigh on indestructible anyway. Plus I don't have any grommits the right size.
Can't actually tell much from inside aside from when heat starts being thrown out of it and the fan starts to ramp up...but it's quite obvious from the exhaust side when the burner fires.
https://youtu.be/8-QMKuno0ec
Apologies for the loud buzzing towards the start... annoyingly this phone doesn't silence the notification vibration when recording video...so when people start sending me email, you get interrupted. Sorry.
The smoke initially (unburned diesel actually) I think is mostly because it will have dumped quite a bit of fuel into the combustion chamber while I was trying to get the pump to prime properly. I don't think it will generally smoke quite so much on future starts.
Yes, it does sound like you're standing next to a teeny tiny jet engine...it's quite loud actually (outside, is really quiet inside the van), and I wasn't expecting much from the supplied silencer really... it's just a tiny little expansion box.
https://youtu.be/IXcmak6M4-U
Impressive...I wasn't expecting it to do *anything* much less totally cut down the obtrusive noise. Muted it down to more or less totally inconspicuous white noise.
This is where I left things yesterday...
Today (finally bringing us up to date), we had a bit of tidying up to do really...
It was still distinctly wet outside...so I decided to postpone plumbing in the heater to the vehicle fuel tank until A: It's less wet...and B: There's less fuel in it...I don't want to go and accidentally start syphoning 70 litres of diesel all over the drive.
So we've gone with a temporary fuel tank for now.
The tube is a really snug fit in the hole I've drilled in the cap so it's not going to spill anywhere, and the can has been firmly wedged in place... it's not going anywhere.
The bracket was attached to the silencer and it was attached to the van...I need to attach a little elbow to the end so I can point it a little downwards rather than just outward as it is at the moment. There's not a particularly strong stream of gases from it at least...there will definitely be a "Warning - Hot Exhaust" label going down there though.
I'm an idiot though and put the bolt through the bracket the wrong way...so I'll need to flip that around because it looks messy.
While I was down there I also added some heat shielding around the exhaust pipe to protect the floor around it.
The intake hose has also been fastened in place and has had the muffler attached. I've tucked it in behind the fuel tank so it should be pretty well shielded from the elements.
Then I was able to give the heater a proper test this evening...we were showing 9C on the thermostat when I got through the door after dinner...fifteen minutes later the van was comfortably warm. I'll take that result.
Then I just needed to tidy up the mess I'd made...looked like a camper again pretty quickly.
Irked I didn't get the thermostat straight...though it will be going back on the wall when I pick up the Afterburner kit anyhow...
As currently there's a hole where the old stat was.
So this does leave me with something I need to find a new home for, the old heater.
That is a funky looking heat exchanger...
Looks like something out of a nuclear reactor...
So that's where we are so far... probably will be leaving it here for the time being as I need to actually use the van over this next week or so, so need to leave of pulling it to bits any further!