Heater repair

[Tony Dolby]

Hi People,

A thought crossed my mind, parallel universes and all that!

I was servicing my 2-stroke strimmer recently after having symptoms of fuel starvation, prime it, runs for half a minute, dies etc. Spoke to the maintenance man at the spares place and he said " Ah, it's the lead free petrol, we've had no end of problems with the new additives in the lead free playing havoc with the various plastics, pipes, diaphragms etc." The effect apparently takes time to show, hence now rather than then.

Could this be relevant??

Still loving the forum,

Kindest, Tony.

[ChrisB]

Funny you should mention this, as I actually do a part time jobbie at a Garden Machinery Center and we have untold grief with stale fuel

Since we have gone over to unleaded the fuel shelf life has dropped considerabley, as well as the chemicals they now bung in it affecting some of the plastics etc.

But theres also another problem is that the plastics they are now using are very cheap and horrible and get attacked by fuel easily.

Another problem we've found especially with the cheap chinese stuff is they REALLY dont like old fuel, the reason we feel is they run them so lean these days to meet emmision regs (yes lawn mowers etc have to meet emmisions these days) that once the fuel has "gone off" theres just not enough flamable energy left in the tiny amount sucked into the engine for it to actually fire up on.

Take stale fuel and put it in an old engine and it will run fine, try it back in a modern lean burn and it wont

To be fair I suspect the heaters should be fine on unleaded as they would have been made for it, but the fuel does go stale quickly and hence why its not good to leave a lot in the tank during the summer period.

ChrisB

[EVguru]

Put modern fuel in an old vehicle and they often run rather rich at low rpm. Particularly on motorcycles, this can lead to stumbling when pulling away. I 've had to put in smaller idle jets.

There are a lot more 'aromatics' in modern fuel. You don't get a grey deposit in the exhaust (that was the lead) and it's not necessarily possible to read a correct mixture by looking at the plug colour.

[ChrisB]

There are a lot more 'aromatics' in modern fuel. You don't get a grey deposit in the exhaust (that was the lead) and it's not necessarily possible to read a correct mixture by looking at the plug colour.

Tell me about it, almost impossible these days to get the mixture correct without a grands worth of gas anaylise
99% of tuning has to be done by ear and feel as theres very little on the visuals.

ChrisB

[EVguru]

You can pick up ex MOT four gas analysers for less than £200 or even £100 sometimes.

An alternaive is http://wbo2.com/ and they sell on ebay in the UK. They don't have to be used in an exhaust system, it's possible to build an off-board setup.

[jezf]

Thanks Chris, I will try that.

Got round to fiddling with the heater tonight, and took out the power supply too this time. After putting it all back, the heater suddenly fired up and is now working properly again. Just in time too! Thanks for your helpful posts in this thread.

[NickJ]

well its freezing and the heater on the berlingo is doing funny things much like Chris'. I have checked the pump works and delivers fuel by pulsing it with 12v. The heater starts fine and runs for a short while and then the fuel pump stops and the heater "flames out" (accompanied by a couple of small hiccoughs) and then sometimes tries to re-start with the same sequence being repeated.

Short of spending a fortune on a new unit

Any ideas on the fault...no real conclusion on the thread

Anybody know of a source of spares for these units at sensible money?

Any help appreciated....especially by Jo who used the van every day and is freezing!

Nick

[ChrisB]

Try filling the tank up with nice fresh fuel, then pulse out manually about a cup full of fuel i.e pull off the fuel pipe from the heater and appling 12v to it like you have in the past, it will take a while to get a cup full out but at least then you know you have fresh fuel at the heater.

Mine seems to be OK now its got fresh fuel in it but it still struggles to keep going when its down to about a 1/3 of a tank.
A lot of the time I feel I can hear "flame lift" in the burner so it still appears to be burning lean and I still suspect a blocked filter somewhere ??

But that certainly seems to have fixed mine for now, full tank of fresh fuel, and pulsed out the old fuel that was in the fuel lines.

CAUTION :- Please do remember when your dealing with petrol it is a dangerous substance and it can ignite quite easily with sparks etc so take care when messing about with it

ChrisB

[Joe T]

Is the webasto really that fussy on the fuel front. I had one in G Wagon and ran it on all sorts diesel, red, heating, parafin!
Maybe the Berlingo one is more advanced? (just our luck)

[ChrisB]

Not sure to be honest, I do think that theres a filter somewhere that I havent found yet though.

It just seems strange if I fill mine with fresh fuel it works OK yet once the fuel gets a few weeks/months old its not happy at all and cetainly modern fuel does "go off" far quicker than the old stuff.

I also had a blown hot air deisel in my electric Bedford CF and that would run on anything that would burn

I think the petrol heaters are a little more fussy due to them having to be much better at controlling the burn due to the nature of the fuel being more volatile than something like deisel which isnt likely to go bang regardless of what you do with it, unlike petrol which could.

It amazes me that we dont hear of heaters exploding when they have issues or at the very least going POP, when you consider how explosive petrol vapour can be !!!!

ChrisB