Parking Heater - Final

In March, I posted a series about installing one of those inexpensive Chinese Diesel Heaters into Hapy, the TDI-powered microbus (See Parking Heater 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5). I have completed the little things that I had left undone, so today's post takes a break from the oil temperature and pressure stuff and wraps up the heater.

Power Switch

I had left off with a power switch wired between the main (drive) battery and the heater. It was dangling around in the cabinet behind the old refrigerator-turned-cabinet. I added a wire to the luxury battery housed under the rock-n-roll bed through the fuse box I have controlling circuits to that battery. I also bored a hole into the wood support I have in that rear cabinet holding the old westy battery maintenance panel. I don't really use that panel, mostly because I haven't finished wiring up shore power to charge the luxury battery. Anyway, I punched a 5/8" hole through and fed the switch through, nutting it down. It looks fairly finished now; it just needs a label.

Cabinet a Cabinet Again

floor back in.

The heater sits on the floor of the old refer cabinet. I only need about 7 inches of clearance, but I gave it 8-1/2 so I could add a layer of insulation later. At the 8-1/2 inch point, I attached 2 wood supports running along the front and rear walls. On top of these, I put a thin run of foam to reduce any noise or rattling, and then settled a rectangular board for a cabinet floor. In the future, I will probably attach some kind of insulation to the bottom of that floor. For now, it is just a bare piece of wood.

The smaller cabinet can still hold quite a bit of stuff. I re-stowed the zombie-apocalypse Red Cross first aid duffel, some paper products, and a few other fairly important yet random things (playing cards and a cribbage board, for example).

Afterburner

Afterburner installed

Afterburner unpacked

The Australian guy (Ray Jones) who makes the Afterburner appears relatively unaffected by the CoVid-19 lockdown, so he was able to process my order and sent it to me. Bear in mind, he is a one-man operation, so the waiting list can be rather long. I let the package sit for a few days in quarantine (on concrete garage floor) before digging into it. The included install instructions are easy to follow, and all of the parts are easy to identify. I had it installed, complete with wire routing and final wall mounting in a couple of hours. I have only scratched the surface of what this thing can do, but I am very impressed with it so far. In my opinion, the white case and grey buttons looks great. Like so many other improvements, this shows me how much I can raise the aesthetic simply by adding carpeting to the wall cards. All of the scratches in the picture on the right, here, highlights how overdue this is.

Afterburner operating

Okay, today's post was a little light, but all combined, those short passages took me hours to complete. More important, the heater is complete. Once I have the Afterburner figured out, I'll be able to pre-heat the bus in the winter time, have the heater turn on based on a schedule, shut off based on temperature, etc. Basically, it will have the same capabilities as a home thermostat... but in a 50 year old VW bus. This heater install was originally so we could get warm during the summer solstice music festival in Bend (4Peaks) which would have been next month had the CoViD pandemic not happened. Assuming everything is back to normal in June 2021, we will use it there. Maybe, just maybe, next winter I will be able to achieve my old dream of taking Hapy to the mountains for some fun in the snow.... now that we have a way to get the cabin warm. Hmm.. maybe I need to figure out how to add a defroster first.

Thanks again for following along. More next time-