Help! Eberspacher is driving me mad!

[dccruiser]

Hi all, I have a eberspacher hydronic dw5 which i have just inherited with my new boat, when i bought the boat a few weeks ago.

The cental heating was a work on progress, new rads and all new pipework, the eberspacher had previously just fed the calorifier and 2 rads, but has had a total refit, so is now fitted with four rads i have just piped in.

I have bled the system and pressured out any remaining air using a hose on one of the drain cocks.

The battery voltage is good and the fuel supply is good.

I have a timer fitted with diagnostics and checked the fault log, it is showing no fault present, AF 000 . the previous recorded faults are all F 014 suggesting it previously had a pressure differential or temp sensor fault, but the previous owner had obviously found the cause and rectified it.

What happens when i switch it on to boost is it will run for up to a minute then cut out.

The first time i ran it , it ran for a couple of minutes and although the heater body was red hot to touch the pipes were cold.

Any ideas on what i can try would be greatly appreciated as i am sure nothing has failed as it starts every time without fail, just wont keep running ... and just to help, i discovered the stove has no sealing rope around the door, so at the moment its colder on the boat than outside!

 

Cheers

 

Rick

 

[GoodGurl]

on system startup it checks the glowplug,coolant pump,blower motor,and fuel pump

1st stage system check water pump off,blower on momentarily,glowplug off,fuel pump off this happens between 1 and 3 secs of switching it on.

2nd stage is pre-heat water pump on, blower on, glowplug on, fuel pump off that is within 40 secs of switching it on.

3rd stage ignition attempt, pump on, blower on, glowplug on, fuel pump on this is after 80 secs of switching on.

4th stage pump on, blower on ,glowplug off, fuel pump on, water pump on.

hope this helps.

[calara]

Don't suppose there's a thermostat anywhere set to zero degrees - we had that - it took a while to realise.

 

Good luck

 

Rod

Edited November 20, 2014 by calara

[by'eck]

Hi all, I have a eberspacher hydronic dw5 which i have just inherited with my new boat, when i bought the boat a few weeks ago.

The cental heating was a work on progress, new rads and all new pipework, the eberspacher had previously just fed the calorifier and 2 rads, but has had a total refit, so is now fitted with four rads i have just piped in.

I have bled the system and pressured out any remaining air using a hose on one of the drain cocks.

The battery voltage is good and the fuel supply is good.

I have a timer fitted with diagnostics and checked the fault log, it is showing no fault present, AF 000 . the previous recorded faults are all F 014 suggesting it previously had a pressure differential or temp sensor fault, but the previous owner had obviously found the cause and rectified it.

What happens when i switch it on to boost is it will run for up to a minute then cut out.

The first time i ran it , it ran for a couple of minutes and although the heater body was red hot to touch the pipes were cold.

Any ideas on what i can try would be greatly appreciated as i am sure nothing has failed as it starts every time without fail, just wont keep running ... and just to help, i discovered the stove has no sealing rope around the door, so at the moment its colder on the boat than outside!

 

Cheers

 

Rick

 

The symptoms suggest the water is not being circulated (pump failure) or there is an air lock maybe. Either way the heat from the boiler is not reaching the water that circulates it to the radiators.

[Athy]

I have limited technical knowledge, but we do have an Ebersplutter in our boat.

We find that, if the batteries are not fully charged, it will whine for maybe 30 seconds and then expire. So your best plan may be to start it while your engine is running, so that there is plenty of charge in the batteries. This always worked for us when we had elderly, declining batteries until recently.

[dccruiser]

Thank you for the replies,

I have tried with the engine running and 14,5 volts showing on the voltmeter, but i have made a note to check and clean all connections just in case)

The thermostat is turned up. there is a pump on the calorifier line and that wont run if it is down, although this pump is a little noisy,

Will try bleeding again in the morning but i am sure it isnt air.

The heater goes through its full start up and does actually run i have felt the heat from the exhaust and heat on the heater body itself.

 

Any more suggestions greatly received and thank you again

 

Rick

[GoodGurl]

you could always get a service kit for about £20 if it's been standing awhile.

[blackrose]

The best thing you can do with an Eberspacher is chuck it in a skip. Sorry, but the brutal truth is that they are just toys, not serious deisel heaters.

Edited November 21, 2014 by blackrose

[ChimneyChain]

The thing with these heaters is that they can run 24/7 365 days continuously with no problems but leave them idle for 5 or 6 months and they will give you no end of trouble. So always run a couple of hours a day to stop any furring up on the inside.

 

Darren

[Southern Star]

I have an Eberspacher in my truck,and the above is fairly good advice, although I only tend to run mine once a week during the Summer, the other advice I'd give is to run it at absolute maximum heat for 20 minutes or so once a week all year round, this stops it coking up. First thing to check with any auxiliary heater problem is that the air intake isn't obstructed.

[davidb]

"I have bled the system and pressured out any remaining air using a hose on one of the drain cocks."

 

have you found the little slotted vent screw at the top of the unit? I had that problem once.

 

cheers, David

[NMEA]

Start it up so the pump is running, then quickly remove the outlet hose, if you get a load of air and then water the heat exchanger was airlocked, a common issue, if so bung the hose back on again it should be fine from then on. I assume you have a primitive header tank install, replacing it with a more efficient pressure system will also help as you can purge the heat exchanger without running the heater.

Edited November 21, 2014 by NMEA

[David Mack]

I have bled the system and pressured out any remaining air using a hose on one of the drain cocks.

 

That doesn't sound too good. The system really should be laid out so that all the pipework rises to vent point(s) and falls to drain cock(s), so that you can fill and empty it without risk of airlocks or leaving some water behind.

 

How can you be sure that purging with water fdrom the bottom will clear every air lock? And if you are purging like this, you need to allow plenty of water to run out of the air vents, to get the best chance of removing all the air. So how then do you go about filling with antifreeze/inhibitor?

[Naughty Cal]

The thing with these heaters is that they can run 24/7 365 days continuously with no problems but leave them idle for 5 or 6 months and they will give you no end of trouble. So always run a couple of hours a day to stop any furring up on the inside.

 

Darren

Which is why they suggest running them for an hour once a week in the case of our Webasto.

 

To be honest we don't tend to follow that advice but will use the heater in the summer to dry off wet clothing.

 

Our temporary neighbours thought we were made when we rocked up to Whitby in July and stuck the heating to dry some coats whilst we went to the pub

[dccruiser]

Hi all,

Joy of joys it is all working now .... was a combination of things, the inlet was blocked with crud possibly rotten leaves, the heater needed a decoke, and there were 2 airlocks , one on a loop of pipework to the pump behind the kitchen units so really accessible ... not! and the other in the heater itself... was amazed how well that bleed screw works!

So, thank you to all for taking the time to post replies

 

The manuals are available for download here giving step by step instructions to stripping and rebuilding these units, i downloaded one this morning and put it in a folder on the boat for the next time!

 

http://butlertechnik.com/download/4s/Eberspacher_Hydronic_D5WSC_Workshop_Manual.pdf

 

Cheers

 

Rick

[NMEA]

The official advice is one per month for 30 minutes to keep fresh fuel in the lines and prevent bearing seizure, I assume from your type and size of vessel that you have an AT2000 which are pretty good for coking (or lack of it) if set up and used properly.

Which is why they suggest running them for an hour once a week in the case of our Webasto.

[Southern Star]

Webastos and Eberspachers were originally designed for truck sleeper cabs, and they work fairly well in them, although they have always been prone to reliability problems. I have an Eberspacher which is six years old and which has never been serviced; having said that I only ever set it (on the timer) to run for 10-15 minutes in the morning to warm the cab up, and it also serves the function of being an alarm clock because it is so noisy.

 

I think they struggle as an all-day, every day heater in a narrowboat because the increased space makes them work much harder than they were designed to, they weren't designed to pump out heat for hours at a time..

[Naughty Cal]

The official advice is one per month for 30 minutes to keep fresh fuel in the lines and prevent bearing seizure, I assume from your type and size of vessel that you have an AT2000 which are pretty good for coking (or lack of it) if set up and used properly.

It is the ST2000. Works a treat. To the best of our knowledge it has not been touched for the last 12 years since it was installed. We have owned it for almost the last seven!