Unfortunately my van never came with a night heater fitted. It must have been removed at some point in the vans life prior to me owning it. We lived with it for a period of time, but I knew it was something that i would want to get sorted at some point in the future. I managed to buy a second hand one from a guy on the Brick Yard forum.

20141030_184908I brought it as an unknown entity and stripped it down to find that the motor had blown and the blower assembly had seized.

EberCase1
On the bench for stripdown
EberStripped
Stripped and evaluated
EberFan
De-coked components

I came to the conclusion that the build up of coke in the combustion chamber probably cause the motor to stop and burn out. So after a strip down and de-coked the of all of the moving components, I had gotten the fan assembly spinning again quite nicely. I could not find a replacement motor so decided to have a go at repairing the faulty one. This involved soldering a very fine wire in place but i did it and was really happy with the progress 🙂 .

Unfortunately my Eber resurrection failed at the last hurdle. I was informed that the heater was in actual fact a petrol model after I posted a picture of what I thought was the glow plug on a forum. I was told that it was in fact a spark plug, so it to an abrupt holt as my is diesel  :( .

Advice had been given previously that i was wasting my time trying to resurrect a 25 year old heater as it was never going to be as reliable as a new one. I wanted to prove to myself that it could be done but the fact the heater i had bought was the wrong fuel type meant that i had to throw the towel in and look for an alternative. I was reluctant to throw good money after bad and buy another questionable second hand unit. Fortunately a forum member suggested I considered getting a newer unit and that he actually had a selection of heaters for sale. So after a few pm’s I settled on a Webasto Airtop 2000st.

The original Eberspacker heater box had already been refurbished by myself previously with a good few coats of Hammerite black in anticipation of the original heater being completed and working.

Original Eberspacher housing
Original Eberspacher housing

Fortunatly new heater was small enough to fit in this so it would not have to take up space inside the van. Below you can see all of the parts together, including new heater hose which bridges the gap from heater unit into the van

CasingandWebasto
New Webasto and original Eber housing

Here you can see the heater is mounted in the housing and a register plate has been screwed in place for inlet and exhaust.

CasingandWebasto2

The original Eberspacher controller was removed from the right hand side of the van to make way for the Webasto  controller.  The Eber controller was also linked by a loom to the timer unit that mounts at the front of the rock and roll bed so this came out at the same time. That gap would now be filled by a small square clock which was sent as a good will gesture from the fellow that i bought the heater off 😉 .

So all that was left to do was to fit the unit to the van. Knowing that there would be a lot of work underneath the van, and i would struggle to get access to do the job properly, i decided to take it to a local trusted garage. I loaded all of the parts i wanted fitting and dropped the van off.

CasingWebastoVanA day or so later I collected Wolfgang with a fully installed and working night heater. I can’t recommend these units highly enough and wouldn’t want to be without one now 😉

Andy

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Comments

4 responses to “Night Heater Install.”

  1. What location on the van did you place the heater?

    1. Andy Burrows Avatar
      Andy Burrows

      Hi there Kyle. The Night heater is bolted to the under side of the chassis opposite the LPG gas tank on the Westy. The two ducts feed up below the bed and blow air into the van through a vent in the bed / seat front panel. I’ll try and add more info in time

  2. Craig ingham Avatar
    Craig ingham

    Are you using LPG for fuel ?

    1. Andy Burrows Avatar
      Andy Burrows

      Craig, the night heater is diesel. It runs on the vans main fuel tank. Hope this helps. Andy

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