Has anyone installed or heard of the Espar Hydronic 4/5 diesel preheater? If it works as advertised is should be pretty sweet. It uses diesel fuel and battery power and will preheat your engine and cab for not very much fuel versus idling the Duramax. Unfortunately it's expensive but at least then you are not tied to the nearest power outlet and you can save the cost of the remote start. The company Webasto also makes a version. I'm thinking of getting one for this northern MN winter.

Yes, I've got the Espar Hydronic 5. It works as advertised and better. I installed it myself and a few others here also have one. I think it's money well spent when you can't plug in.

Espar seems to be the same as Eperspächer --- actually, I've recently bought a Hydronic D5WS off ebay. It hasn't arrived yet, though.

Be careful which model you buy! There seems no big difference between Webasto and Espar/Eberspächer, but all of the Webasto water heaters except for the 'Thermo Top C' model are limited to run for max. 30 or max. 60 minutes. They have a small fuel reservoir built in which is filled up from the fuel return line while the engine is running. The reservoir must not be filled by using a seperate pump, so there's no chance to make them running longer.

The Hydronic D5WS has a fuel pump and you can let it run for max. two hours with the standard control device. But since it has a fuel pump, one should be able to override the control device to run the heater until the batteries are depleted. It is labled to draw about 50/23 Watts at full/half power, but the blower motor of the cabin heating system will draw another 150--200 Watts (or whatever it takes).

Drawing a total of about 250W is a bit hard on the batteries, and it's one of the reasons for the time limit the heaters from Webasto have. I'm going to relocate the batteries on mine from the engine bay into the cabin, and I'll upgrade from the two 70Ah batteries to two 120Ah batteries anyway. That should allow to run the heater for about 8 hours if I need to and allows to mount the heater in the empty battery compartment :)

I've been asking Webasto and Eberspächer for a recommendation, providing that I've got almost 10 gallons of coolant liquid in the system. Webasto only recommended to show up at a dealer to ask him for advice; but Eberspächer recommended the Hydronic 10.

The Hydronic 5 is probably strong enough, but that still has to turn out when it's installed ...

Here are some pictures of it:


http://www.dieselplace.com/forum/uploads/0lee/2004-10-19_140533_cut-0.jpg

http://www.dieselplace.com/forum/uploads/0lee/2004-10-19_140647_half.jpg

The lighter and the cup are just to help telling the size :)

How difficult is the install?

> How difficult is the install?

Well, I can't tell yet, the heater arrived just today and is still to be installed. In theory, installation is easy and goes like that:


+ find a place under the hood to mount the heater
+ route its air intake and exhaust pipes to appropriate places
+ tap the heater's fuel pump into the fuel line
+ find a place in the cabin for the controlling device
+ find a place for the water pump
+ install the electrical wiring: heater, controlling device, fuel pump, water pump, blower
+ tap the engine cooling system at an appropriate place --- preferably the tubing that supplies the cabin heat exchanger --- and install the water pump so that the water will go through the heater and the cooling system


Some planning has to be done in advance, like determining where exactly the components will go, then getting the accessories needed, like tubing and such.

Maybe I can take pictures during the installation and document the process ...


BTW, has anyone information about the wiring of the climate controls in the cabin? The engine heater will warm up the water to some temperature and then switch on the blower to warm up the cabin. Thus, the blower must somehow be powered, and I'd like to be still able to switch it to higher or lower levels.

Olee,


I dont have the Espar but had a 110 volt plug in type heater and pump in my '97 Z71. I would heat the coolant and push it through the cooling/heating system.


It worked similar to an old gravity type furnace. The heat from the warmed up coolant would just naturally rise in the cab, warming the cab and melting the ice.


No blower was running as it would run the battery down.

I have sold several Espars for the Dmax and many other diesel pickups.
They work great and are easy to install but it will take some time. the
worst parts is dropping the fuel tank to put in the pickup tube. The D5
S is the best one to use because the water and fuel pump are external
and always for a much easier mounting of the heater.





Greg

HD-Nate,

I decided against an electrical heater because they always need an appropriate power supply (230V in most of Europe), but I wanted to be independent from that. Even at home, I´d have to route a cable out from the garage into the street each evening (and remove it in the morning), and at work and on holiday trips, the heater would be of no use. I´ve got a power converter that makes 230V from 12V battery power. The converter can supply up to 3kW, but it would deplete the batteries rather quickly when driving an engine heater with it :)

I need the heating device for the following purposes:


+ warm up engine and cabin in the morning when going to work
+ warum up engine and cabin in the afternoon/evening when going back home
+ keep the cabin warm when sleeping in the truck, mostly while going home from work, eventually on holiday trips
+ warm up the engine on holiday trips to very cold regions
+ have a backup system on holiday trips to cold regions in case the heater in the camping trailer fails or runs out of gas or the battery in the trailer is depleted --- a bottle of gas will last 3 or 4 days only, and I might be unable to get it refilled


All this cannot be done with an electrical heater.

The blower needs to be run to get the cabin warm and thereby the ice off the windows. Heater and blower will probably draw about 170--200W in the total average. With two 120 amps batteries, I should be able to run them for at last 8--10 hours without any trouble; reloading the batteries may take 3 or 4 hours of driving.

The heater switches off automatically once battery voltage goes down to 10.2. Unless engine temp has gone below about 10C, I should still be able to start it when the batteries are low. If that doesn´t work, I eventually can use the battery from the camping trailer to get started.

I could use larger batteries, like two 200 amp ones, but they weigh about 65kg each, twice as much as the 120 amp ones.

LanduytG,

can't one just T into the fuel line?

BTW, do you eventually have some info on where power can be supplied to the blower? There's some electronics on the climate controls in the dashboard, and I've no idea what the electronics there is supposed to do or where power can be safely applied to the blower switch and/or to the whole system.


Yesterday, Eberspächer has sent me documentation on the model I've got --- their support is actually very nice :) My heater happens to be an OEM part they put into some Mercedes vans. I've studied the wiring diagrams, and though the diagrams look confusing, after quite some time I could understand them, and by that, wiring appeared to be an easy thing --- except for powering the blower, maybe.

I have the 5 installed. I cannot say enough good about it. http://www.dieselplace.com/forum/smileys/smiley32.gif Makes winter much more bearable.


I never once started a cold engine last winter since having it installed. I think that is a contributing factor to my low wear numbers in my oil analysis. You can't believe how warm the engine gets with this thing.


Plus, no more scraping windows. I set it to come on about 90 minutes before I leave to go to or from work.


Got mine from Greg at lubespecialist.com.

Teeing into thge fuel line is not reliable. You have a 2mm line trying to draw through a 13mm line. You will lose suction sometimes. Take it from me you need to put it in the tank. As for wiring I just pull the contol out of the dash and find the hot wire to the switch. I can't tell you what the color codes are.





Greg

The blower needs to be run to get the cabin warm and thereby the ice off the windows.





Olee,


Oh I agree, the electrical heater had its limitations and is why I didnt take it off the truck when I sold it. <?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />


BUT.....I didnt need to run the blower at all on the truck. When I shut the truck down for the evening, I left the controls on to where the ducting would allow the heat from the heater core to rise into the cab via the defrost vents.


I had a timer to turn the pump on about 2 hours prior to leaving for work. Any ice, snow, etc was melted off the windows by the time I left for work.


No blowers running, just natural heat convection.


I agree, the Espar is a much nicer unit, but I just cant justify the $$$ for it right now.