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Engine Preheater on 2.25 diesel

Almost forgot, the 2 fixing holes have a 2BA thread.

The voltage rating is said to be 220 volts and power of 3 kW.
I measured one of mine the other day.
It had 234 volts applied to it and it was consuming 2.75 kW.
 
just been and had a look at fitting this heater are these the pipes I need to join into ? . which one flows to the electric heater ?
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Yes, the 2 pipes that run to the cab heater are the ones to connect into.
Look for the arrows on the preheater showing direction of flow in and out.
The out flow from the preheater should be at the top and goes to the pipe that connects to the thermostat housing.
The in flow to the preheater (at the bottom) is fed from the other pipe from the cab heater going directly to the block at the rear of the engine..
 
I must fit mine soon . been off work since Thursday and decided to refit the shower so playing with cars is out till its finnished
 
now fitted it plug in sounds like a coffee grinder then stops working . it got hot to touch time to change it .
 
Are you sure it doesn't say Tassimo on it?

The kids Tassimo has gone fut today. Refused to make a drink and the idiot lights keep blinking, but to top it off- the thing has locked itself shut, and the double blinking lights mean "return for repair" in the manual. :rolleyes:
 
Richie_asg1 said:
Are you sure it doesn't say Tassimo on it?

The kids Tassimo has gone fut today. Refused to make a drink and the idiot lights keep blinking, but to top it off- the thing has locked itself shut, and the double blinking lights mean "return for repair" in the manual. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
return for repair for stuff from china means file in the scrap bin
 
I've just bought a 2000w one from China, arrived yesterday. Took it apart to check as I normally do with cheap Chinese stuff. Its suprisingly well made, cast ally with a sealed element, but the pump looks very undersized. I'm going to test it on the bench and see what the flow is. I've got a spare 12v heater pump off a Merc so I can rig that if need be. I've been looking at where to fit it, the intructions ( too small to read picture) shows it in series with the heater but it comes with 2 Tees. As I already have a Webasto Tee'd in parallel with the heater and engine I don't want this to short circuit that. My reason for getting it is to use it as a night heater for the camper set up on a mains hook up. We have a 25m mains cable and rear heater+fan so I want it in that circuit. I could use this plus a charger (to power the heater fan on low) to get overhight heat. The 5kw Webasto heats it up well but will drain the leisure battery in 2 nights and we always have a CO monitor, mains would be quieter and we could leave it on longer. Has anyone used one of these as a camper heater? The other problem with the Webasto is it runs an air fan, water pump, fuel pump and igniter plug, I recon its taking a good 7amps (regardless of what Webasto claim)
 
Interesting as I'm just in the process of building that bit on my van. Found the D5w heated the small matrix up far too fast then cuts out when it reaches it's target temp which is pointless in a van set up, so am now extending the run to another blower in the back to hopefully cool it off a bit.
The ignitor should only be on during start up and during shut down to purge all fuel, ticker pump doesn't use much but I found it's the fan blowers that seem to use the power. I've just bought a chinese 24v heater matrix and fan because I tried running a car blower on half power and is quieter so tried this 24v fan on 12v and seems ideal without a dropper resistor. For ÂŁ20 delivered it seems ideal to try out.
I've fitted an ammeter/voltmeter which has proved very useful to find the main current drains. See if you can drop your fan speeds using a PWM module instead of resistors to save a bit as well as find a good quiet night mode.
The pumps on these small heaters seem to fail as I had to replace mine to get the D5w working, so may be better running an external pump with a dumb mains heater block. If it is not restricting I would plumb yours in series with the webasto you have.

I've also got an old black cab Taxi heater matrix and fan on the way so will try both and keep the best option.
 
I run a black taxi heater and fan in the back and Smiths square heater in the front, I have been experimenting with fan resistors to slow the fan, reduce noise and drain. I also have a calorifier mod to a Teal water / sink unit on the heater circuit. Not there yet, I need to put another resistor in series. I have a wire wound 1ohm off e-bay somewhere in the shed. Interesting the taxi unit resistor burned out this week, its aircooled and I'm running the fan slow with another resitor in series already and I think it cooked up for lack of cooling. I have recently fitted a thermostat and digital voltmeter so I can watch the voltage as the ignitor cuts in, I agree, the fan is the problem and so is the cutting in and out. I now have a 100AH leisure batt and it still struggles. I tried a computer fan as they have a very low drain, it didn't work but that was on a smaller exchanger, you've reminded me to try it again on the taxi unit. The taxi units are really good, the problem is the fan current. I spent loads on finned tubing to make a fanless heater, waste of time, 6ft of it did nothing. In series with the Webasto is an option I hadn't thought of, I'll look at that. With the 240v set up I'm thinking of a 12v pump and 12v fan supply wired in so its a single 13A plug or a battery charger and run the 12v off the leisure batt, not sure yet. Re the thermal lag, the rear heater adds a lot more water volume so it runs longer before hitting temp. I have the thermostat off a fan heater in the back and the timer off a Chinese timer light switch (120 mins). The idea with the timer was to set it then go to sleep, but reality is it gets too cold by 3 am. I've done some tests with the taxi heater fan, it blows hard and heats a lot of air volume but running it very slow creats a small flow of much hotter air which is actually nicer when its very cold and it soon mixes with the cooler air so I don't think it needs a lot of fan. I have the manual heater tap on the engine, at night I would shut this to avoid heating the engine all night, there's still 8 ft of hose plus (engine to under the rear tub) the rear heater and Webasto in the circuit. As an aside I'm on my 3rd Thermotop, I now have the software to reset and watch the parameters, (you get odd looks with a laptop plugged into a series!) but the error codes are meaningless as the PCB goes down and you get rubbish diagnostics.
 
As I understand it, the problem with teeing into existing heater hoses is that the flow could completely ignore one of the directions it should take and will simply take the route of least resistance. Having said that, mine seems to work ok. I'm assuming this is because the heater is fitted with a pump and not relying on thermo-syphon.

When we were first married, we lived on a narrow boat and I plumbed in a central heating system that had a tee coming from the boiler. There was no pump and the system did indeed ignore one of the directions and only heated the other one.
 
Extreedoc said:
As I understand it, the problem with teeing into existing heater hoses is that the flow could completely ignore one of the directions it should take and will simply take the route of least resistance. Having said that, mine seems to work ok. I'm assuming this is because the heater is fitted with a pump and not relying on thermo-syphon.

When we were first married, we lived on a narrow boat and I plumbed in a central heating system that had a tee coming from the boiler. There was no pump and the system did indeed ignore one of the directions and only heated the other one.
Click to expand...
Yes that is the potential problem.
It might be better to use the block drain hole to supply the heater to ensure the block gets the lion's share of the heat.

There is another problem that could cause problems on some engines depending on how the heater is plumbed in.
When the engine is running and the heater is switched off the heater piping is an alternative route for hot coolant to flow through which may starve the cab heater matrix.
 
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With regard to the taxi heater in the back, how do you prevent airlocks occurring in the pipes to the heater?
When I fitted a rear heater many years ago preventing and getting rid of recurring airlocks was a major problem.
 
This is the fan speed controller I used - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1x-DC12V...ash=item2856b96b66:g:AwAAAOSwIWxasf6a:rk:1🇵🇫0
10A rated with more heatsinks than most units. I replaced the variable speed pot with a fixed switch giving 3 speeds, but a better option may be to use a switch with 2 sets of contacts so that you can turn the thing on and off using the same switch as the potentiometer is only a speed control and the on off has to be another switch. Not easy wiring it either as it uses both sides of the pot resistor in the circuit.

Planning on a small Tee above it to a 15mm air vent like a radiator to help with airlocks. At the front the system is open to a standard header tank so it should self bleed eventually. There is a small port on the header tank at the top that could also be a solution, and pipe it back to that in 6mm pipe.
 
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