Chinese diesel heaters ?

GreggBear said:
Suppose at what they cost it would be cheaper to carry a spare than to have a quality one mended. Throwaway society wins again....😕
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Yes and thats why cars here go to breakers after there about 4/5 years old,cost of repair and things like brains makes then uneconomical to fix,ok for diy like me and others,hence my last car a seven years cost £10.
 
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Its a big problem in a lot of countries trev, unsustainable long term & gonna go bang in a big way some day soon. Still got my 1987 Daihatsu 4trak & I love the ease of maintenance etc. Parked up for now but watch this space....
 
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It's all very odd. For example Japanese cars, in the home market, are subject to some sort of inspection after a few years which requires taking parts of them to bits, a bit like an aeroplane inspection/repair, and is totally uneconomic, unless it's something exotic. Policy, to keep up demand for the home industry.

So they don't bother rustproofing them properly, it's certainly not that they don't know how to do it superbly for other markets, but that does cost extra money.

Then they get exported to countries who also drive with the steering wheel on the proper side. Such as here. Also means they don't have to have a proper recycling infrastructure.

So my brother has a lovely little Mazda sports car import, virtually unused when he got it, but the first thing he did was to get it properly undersealed and other rust proofing, it was already showing obvious signs.

Same applies to things like Mazda Bongoes, imported from Japan. Not treated to last, caveat emptor.

A near-relative has a Nissan Skyline import, with further tweaks imported from a Japanese tuning company. It's only used for racing and track days and otherwise lives in a heated garage, alongside his other stable of exotica. It's always full up, it's a one-in-one out policy for him, and he doesn't want it weighed down with any additional treatments, which are not necessary for him. It certainly never goes out on wet salty roads, and it's full performance would be utterly unusable legally here as a road car anyway, except for posing. But my goodness it is fun to drive on a racing circuit, if you are really up to fully exploiting it. Which I am not, he is and has held a full racing licence for many many years, but it looked after and flattered me, with all it's cleverness, no offs or spins though I was still faster than anyone else, even those in their Ferraris, Maseratis and McLarens. Then he showed me what it could really do, I'm not easily scared but was a bit nervous at times.

But I digress, as usual.
 
Further, the Skyline is actually a bit of a hindrance on the racing circuits, having the steering wheel on the right. They are almost all set up to run anti-clockwise, I only know of one which is not. My racing near-relative sets up his cars accordingly, even different suspension, tyre pressure and damper settings from one side to the other and has equipment to measure the weight on each wheel, and the tyre temperatures and pressures precisely after the practice laps and adjust. It makes a measurable competitive difference to him.
 
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Cars today last much longer but folk here dont want to be seen driving anything old,ireland is the highest rate of new car owners in europe,when i had my old car one person in our street stopped me and told me to get rid as it was bringing the street down in value,you can think what my return was using one finger.
 
jagmanx said:
Yes But you have to do the repair
What if you are on a mega tour ?
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If you are going on a mega tour then you must expect some things to go wrong, carry some spares, together with the tools to fit them, and have some knowledge and experience of how to use them. You can't just call out the AA. If you are in a real pickle, well a certain amount of self reliance is essential. It's not rocket science.
 
Was with a mate yesterday and he thinks he needs an ecu for his eberspacher D4. Price he was given is £350 and he doesn’t know if it may need other bits until Ecu has been replaced.

Was I him I would be trying a Chinese heater at this point. Probably use same turret plate and fuel inlet/pump
 
Hmm, ECU for a Chinese heater, probably £20. One screw and a few plug in connectors.
 
trevskoda said:
Cars today last much longer but folk here dont want to be seen driving anything old,ireland is the highest rate of new car owners in europe,when i had my old car one person in our street stopped me and told me to get rid as it was bringing the street down in value,you can think what my return was using one finger.
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They must be over the moon with your ex library banger then mate....👍😉😝
 
I guess some of it boils down to what your going to be doing with your van/heater too....

Odd weekends away mostly in season and not too bothered if it packs up ... Chinglese one will likely be fine.

Go away often all year round all season I'd go genuine eber.

We use the van all year (and I don't do being cold)
And though more than capable of swapping a defunct Chinglese jobby, I REALLY can't be bothered when I'm away in the van to be buggering about.

I'd just like it to crack on with what it's supposed to be doing KNOWING that IF I did have an issue it's got a decent guarentee with someone that will still be around IF there was an issue.

All horses for courses as usual
 
Nabsim said:
They are completely different on control side to Eberspacher. With the Chinese ones I believe the intelligence is the controller, that’s why so many things can be tweaked.
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I think it's the other way around.

The controller, by by which I mean the part inside the heater, AFAIK does the basic stuff meaning taking the data sent to it from the other controller, the one you use to put in your desired settings. And can report back useful fault codes to be displayed. That's where the "tweaking" goes on. And they are also very inexpensive.

Basically the heater gets told the pulse rate for the fuel pump, and when to start up and shut down, over a simple serial protocol, which they all use. Copied from earlier German designs. So you can mostly mix and match the components, and choose the external controller that you want, as simple or complicated as you like, and they keep bringing out new ones with even more features. You can even disconnect the two when running, and the heater will keep on running, only way to turn it off is to disconnect the power, which is not great, no proper shutdown sequence commanded by the external controller.

I don't know how say a modern Eberspacker works, but they do say that they now use CanBus between the two and several other fancy features, which allows them to be tightly integrated with the vehicle systems in carefully developed OEM installations.

I don't think that,s particularly useful for aftermarket fits, and might even be a puzzle for an Eberspacher agent to diagnose problems, hence the "well I don't really know what's going on, lets try swapping expensive parts and see what happens" approach.

I'd have hoped that a decent agent would have some spares to hand and already tried this before asking the customer to cough up for an experiment.

I prefer something that I can fault find and fix myself, using readily available inexpensive pretty much standard parts.
 
Sharpie the controller is the part you set temperature with and turn on/off, heat or ventilation. On my Eber I have an 801 with diagnostics. The one in my mates had a timer which I think may be a 700 series. The ecu is an aluminium box mounted on top of his heater that looks like the one on the left on this link https://www.letonkinoisvarnish.co.uk/ecu_failures.html
I thought his was an early D4 but didnt see a plate handy.
 
Thanks Nabsim, I confused myself between ECU and controller. Still it's puzzling that your friend's agent doesn't either have a spare ECU to try, or the nous or the test equipment to determine where the fault actually lies, but wants your friend to pay hundreds of £ for a new one as basically a parts-swapping experiment. I suppose he may have already tried swapping the controller and that didn't work, so then the logical assumption might be that it's the ECU. Or it could just be a fault in the wiring or a dodgy connector in between, which ought to be much less expensive to fix. Anyway, I hope it soon gets resolved satisfactorily.

So much for the supposedly superior reliability of German vs. Chinese. They are after all supposed to be dependable for many years in truck installations where they probably get far harder use, with just simple routine maintenance.
 
There was a time that Germany was known around the world for cheap,shoddy knock offs of foreign goods. China is still thought of in the same way,but I think it's time to change our thinking towards China,they have caught up rapidly and although their goods are generally cheaper,that's only a reflection of lower labour costs rather than necessarily lower standards. They've come a long way in the last twenty years and many of their products are among the best available.
 
The link is quite interesting it points out most ECU failures down to overvoltage now there’s a thing. 🧐

Alf

Nabsim said:
Sharpie the controller is the part you set temperature with and turn on/off, heat or ventilation. On my Eber I have an 801 with diagnostics. The one in my mates had a timer which I think may be a 700 series. The ecu is an aluminium box mounted on top of his heater that looks like the one on the left on this link https://www.letonkinoisvarnish.co.uk/ecu_failures.html
I thought his was an early D4 but didnt see a plate handy.
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Alf said:
The link is quite interesting it points out most ECU failures down to overvoltage now there’s a thing. 🧐

Alf
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Now you mentioned that he is often jump starting his van and his heater runs from the starter battery I believe. Wonder if that may have caused it.
 
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