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« on: 12 December 2012, 20:16:03 »
Dti was fitted with an erberspatcher heater. To answer dbdb's questions:
They work much like the oil central heating boiler in you house, fuel supply, "spark" plug, heat exchanger, exhaust pipe etc. The thing is started by air/ water temperature sensors, you have no direct control over it on UK models. For colder climates they are often fitted with dash mounted programmer to enable pre-warming.
In my opinion the reason they fail on UK cars is due to the poorly designed mounting bracket for the heater. This has a wonderful 5- 8mm gap between it and the heat exchanger which is aluminium. Over the years the gap fills with road muck and salt and erosion of the aluminium water jacket results in leakage.
They can be heard running with the window open and are most audible after you have got out of the car. They run on for a short while to dissipate heat following ignition turn off.
Size - about as big as a miggy alternator but perhaps a little longer.
Fumes vent via a dog leg shaped exhaust and a small silencer to the atmosphere under the drivers front wing. Under the right conditions they can produce quite a plume. If you get a plume all the while, yours is probably leaking,check your coolant level !
Re use on a boat.
I tried for some time to obtain spares for mine a few years ago with no luck. I spoke to various erberspatcher authorised agents who all told be the same thing "GM only mate". There is a visually similar model ( can't quite remember if it is a 3) but the model number indicates the o/p in KW Other info hidden in the model number indicates if it heats air or water, but I have forgotten the details.
Anyway plenty of them around but not cheap. Commonly used in canal boats , trucks, VW air cooled vans&campers ( for real heat) etc and even in many thousands of BT vans, where they also heat water for hand washing .
Webasto were the kings of these things a few years ago, but I think they have gone out of business?
On my old DTi, this thing would double the fuel consumption at tick over !
Interestingly newer Vivaro vans have four glow plug like heaters screwed into an aluminium casting in the coolant jacket. Cheaper, more reliable, easier to maintain, lighter, quieter .... nuf said?
