Fixing Hapy Furnace (part 2)

Picking up where I left off the last post, Hapy has an operational furnace again.

Fuel Pump Swap

As I mentioned in my last post, the fuel pump which originally delivered with the heater/furnace would not work when I tried to bring things back to life. I splurged and bought a more expensive "quiet" model for $50US rather than another standard pump for $20US. I figured quieter or not, the more expensive pump may have better parts in it, and it may last longer whether it is quieter or not. Or it was just a marketing gimmick and I got took. Let's chalk it up to the cost of an experiment.

The old fuel line path was relatively simple. The "hard" (clear but firm plastic) lines that delivered with the furnace had short (50mm / 2-inch) stretches of fuel hose between them and the pump. The pump was suspended from a cross beam by the included rubber mount held in place by a single sheet metal screw. After a few turns with a screwdriver, the pump was on the ground. A few more and the fuel lines were removed from it. The supply fuel line started dripping fuel after a few seconds, so I caught it with a pan. The line on the pressurized side was completely empty, so no drips. I simply reversed the removal: added the rubber mount from the supply end of the pump, added the supply fuel line, suspended the pump from the cross beam and then added the pressurized-side line.

Prime and Fire Up

The Afterburner has a control page where you can direct only the fuel pump to fire up. This allows you to get fuel all the way to the furnace without the glow plug turning on (drawing the battery and maybe burning out the glow plug). I had not connected the pressure line to the furnace, but I wanted to clear the lines of any bad fuel, so I moved the pan under the dangling hardline and triggered the Afterburner to prime. Within a minute of the prime starting, fuel started spurting out the end of the line. It took longer than I expected it to, but perhaps that is an indication of how little fuel these units actually consume. Once the fuel leaving the pressure line looked like the fuel supplied at a filling station, I stopped the prime function and connected the hardline to the fuel hose dangling from the furnace.

While the pump was slightly larger than the original, it did not seem much quieter during the prime. Of course, I hadn't heard it pump in a couple of years, and memory is a funny thing. I do recall that when the furnace was running, I could hear the tick-tick-tick of the fuel pump over the whoosh of the furnace. With this in mind, I set the furnace to start. I did not want to consider the experiment with the new thicker, dedicated wiring yet, so I left the battery tender hooked up. At no point did the battery fall below 13.5V so either the tender was working hard, or the new wiring is a hit.

Regardless, the glow plug got lit, the fan started spinning and after 2 or 3 minutes the furnace ignited. This felt like a considerably longer period of time than before. Perhaps the priming was incomplete and I needed to prime again after connecting the hose to the furnace. Perhaps it took time to ignite simply because it had been so long. Once it ignited, a huge plume of smoke poured out of the little muffler. There was virtually no wind, so the cloud grew and sat slowly obscuring first the rear end of the bus and slowly 2/3 of the bus before a light breeze broke it up. After a few minutes, the cloud dissipated and the exhaust emission was reduced to nothing. All that remained was a light smokey haze inside the bus. I regret not taking a picture of that.

Noise Observations

While the temperature inside the bus slowly crept up from 55*F (13*C), I noted the noises. I could only hear the fuel pump ticking inside the cabinet where the furnace is located and even then, only when I stuck my head into the cabinet. I think the pressurized line is transmitting it. I stuck my head into the rock-n-roll cabinet above the spot where pump is actually installed and could not hear it. Maybe this new pump is quieter. Then, I moved outside where in the past I could clearly hear the pump from several feet away, even from the passenger-door side. I could not hear it, but I could hear the furnace whoosh. Of course, my muffler-ing of the furnace is different this time, having removed the second small rectangular muffler and the motorbike muffler. Perhaps the pump is no quieter, but the furnace is that much louder. To determine if the muffler configuration is a variable, I decided I will conduct another test at a different time, after re-attaching the other muffler bits. I had thought about bringing them along for while-parked use, and maybe I will need to, out of respect for our festival-going neighbors. In the past, I took decibel readings, but they were for while the furnace held a temperature, not during temp catch-up (full blast).

I will continue to experiment with noise readings and post if I find any readings are different than they were 4 years ago. I expect that once I put the extra rectangular and motorbike mufflers on, the readings will be what they were before. The only real mystery to me is whether the fuel pump can be heard over it. At this point, though, the pump seems significantly quieter.

Thanks, as always, for following along-

Fixing Hapy Furnace (part 1)

Having finally arrived at a place where we have some heat while we're moving, I felt motivated to fix the heat for when we are standing still. Today's post covers most of the saga of getting a Chinese diesel heater operational again. Spoiler alert: the heater isn't running by the end of this post.

Brief History

Back in the early days of CoViD, I installed one of those Chinese diesel parking heaters into Hapy (See Parking Heater 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and Final for deep detail). While I was able to run it a few times, I found that the heater pulled the voltage way down on whichever battery was connected to it. I tried to solve by providing multiple batteries to source from: one to start, one to run, but switching from battery to battery seemed like a bad practice. I had other priorities, so I just let the furnace sit unused. When I did the sound deadening effort and the luxury electrical re-wire, I dismantled the cabinet which housed the furnace so I could get sound deadener underneath it and electrical cables through it. This meant dismantling part of the furnace too. Later, when the band wanted to use Hapy for the album cover, I removed the furnace exhaust so it would not appear in pictures. So, I had a furnace without an exhaust, and would draw way too much juice.

Electrical

Over time, and with more learning about electrical stuff, I have concluded that the wire used to convey electricity but perhaps more importantly the wire for a ground were far too thin. It was due to these thin wires that the voltage would drop so badly as the furnace attempted to compensate. Wires which would have been barely up to the job had the battery been sitting right on top of the heater will definitely NOT be up to the task once you move the battery a few feet away. This is exacerbated by running the ground to the body of the bus instead of back to the battery. The ground location should not matter as much, but I'm citing it as a participant cause anyway. So, addressing the electrical came first after removing the furnace from the bus.

A small harness of wires leaves the furnace body and enters a black plug (see picture on the right). The harness that ships with the furnace includes a pigtail that clicks into the furnace black plug. To my eye, the red and black wires in the pigtail are not nearly as thick as the wires leaving the furnace. This probably saved the manufacturer a few pennies, but the amp draw issue starts right there (and in my case got worse). So, I cut the main power and main ground wires from the furnace black plug and put male/female wire ends on them (12V/ground respectively). I made them different so I couldn't accidentally plug it in backwards. I then prepped a thick 2-wire black/red cable with matching wire ends, and routed it over to the luxury battery. At the battery end, I added a ring terminal for the ground and added a 20Amp fuse into the positive side before adding a ring terminal on that end. I left things detached as I switched to preparing for the exhaust.

Exhaust

From under the bus, it was clear that I had not made the hole(s) large enough for the exhaust, intake and fuel to be easily maintained. Quite the contrary, I had installed it such that once it was all together, it would have to all come apart to fix anything. Frowny-face. So, I started by cutting a 4-inch square hole into the lower belly pan. Many buses do not have these, but I got lucky. Anyway, with the hole cut I could see where the furnace sat, and noticed that the exhaust was getting pinched by the too-small hole in the floor as the exhaust left the furnace. So, I went topside and expanded the upper hole both in the floor of the cabinet and the steel floor of the bus. With the larger hole, the exhaust easily fits and things could be maintained from below. Still, I did what I could on the furnace itself before lowering it in: Connect a 6" long stretch of fuel line, attach a small circle of window screen to the intake (so bugs and pebbles don't get in) and then attach maybe a foot of heat-wrapped exhaust. I set the furnace in place and attached a small subset of the muffler arrangement I had used before: just one rectangular muffler. I may bring the expanded muffler set up for use when we are in tighter camping spots (like festivals), so we can bolt-on some extra quiet. I mounted the muffler to the underside of the frame rail, with the outlet pointing rearward and slightly away from center (picture on the right).

A keen eye can see some fresh Rustoleum primer + paint above the muffler where I discovered some rust had eaten all the way through the body. When I was working on the other stuff I ground the metal down, removing the rust, but exposing the holes. Sadness. That rust traces back to when this bus had a small vent window directly above this spot. That vent window was badly leaking and the rust had already been forming to the point of marring the paint when I bought this bus over 20 years ago. I eliminated the vent window in 2015 (See Calling "glass") with a window I purchased from BusBoys in Redding, CA in 2009. Some things move slower than others.

Fuel

I shifted over to fueling at this point. The fuel line that had been between the included "hard" line and the furnace had breeched, probably when I did the sound deadening. The fuel in the line looked dark, so I dropped the line into an empty pail, and figured I would prime the fuel system, and purge the bad fuel at the same time. Unfortunately, the fuel pump is no longer functional, so I am waiting on a replacement to finish this job.

Afterburner

Back when I first did this job, I bought an Afterburner from the guy who hand builds them in Australia. Apparently, there are people building knock-offs, eating into his business, since they basically have cloned his work. So, if you are looking at getting the much nicer controller for your parking heater, please connect with Mr. Jones in Australia and get the real deal. Anyway, with the Afterburner, I tried to prime the fuel system, but the fuel pump wouldn't respond. When I unplugged the pump, I got a code; I concluded the wiring to the pump was good but pump was bad. So I ordered a new, supposedly quieter, one. We'll see. While I was clowning around with the Afterburner, I got it onto my home network, downloaded the newest firmware and wandered around the new-to-me website that the Afterburner hosts. It's really cool. I am looking forward to triggering the furnace to warm the bus from inside. For reference, here is a link to the user manual.

This is as far as I've gotten. I am waiting for a new fuel pump to arrive. I need to purge the old lines of nasty fuel, and install that new pump. I expect there will be other discoveries, and I need to rebuild the cabinet innards. There's always opportunities to improve things. Anyway, thanks, as always, for following along-

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-

Parking Heater (Part 5)

How this concept took more posts to cover than the rebuilding of the front end of the MGB, I don't know. But, here we are, a fifth post about it. Wow. Let's start with re-capping what the prior 4 posts have covered.
Part 1 - why I'm doing this and what's in the box. Also some early, uninformed ideas about needed upgrades
Part 2 - planning, ripping up the old refer cabinet, placing the fuel line and fuel pump
Part 3 - planning a heat register, connecting the fuel line to the heater, sourcing the power and then an air filter boondoggle.
Part 4 - connecting the exhaust, installing the heater unit, completing the fuel system, completing the electrical and the heat register

So, what's left? Routing the exhaust, the inbound combustion air and running some tests.

Exhaust Wrap'd

fuel pump gets vertical

Until now, the exhaust has simply flopped on the ground. Obviously, that is not a viable long-term solution. So, after watching some interesting video footage of various muffler styles (courtesy of John McK), I made some decisions. JohnMcK stressed that the intake and exhaust must be left as open and clear as possible for long-term health of your heater. It was this advice that had me abandon any muffler wadding. He was also confirming what Hal said. JohnMcK was the source of the info to orient the pump as vertical as possible as well (see picture to see how mine is now oriented). I was going to conduct a bunch of noise experiments, but JohnMcK already did that for us. I encourage you to watch his videos; he is super-dedicated to these things.

So, post JohnMcK love-fest, I decided to use 2 of those little thought-they-were-garbage "muffler"s. Based on JohnMcK's findings, they each drop the dB by about 10% and when placed in series that continues (so 60dB drops to 54 which then drops to around 50). I had already acquired a flow-thru motorbike muffler, and John tested one of them also. They didn't seem as impressive as they looked, but I intend to use one anyway, since it will help to hide the others.

only shiny things in sight

The "muffler"s need to hang vertically because they each have a drain to let out moisture and/or unspent fuel. Unfortunately, they are hard to hide, especially since they are shiny and there's practically nothing shiny on this bus. The underside is particularly NOT shiny, so these "muffler"s will be very visible. Consider that the heater exhaust exits the bus a foot or so forward of the rear driver-side wheel, fairly close to the outer edge/lip along the side. Because of the short distance between the exit point and the wheel well, in order to route sound muffling, the pipe needs to run forward and then turn back on itself (exhaust must point rear and down or the air-flow from driving will create back-pressure). JohnMcK stresses the importance of having no more than 270* of bend in your exhaust or you may create too much back-pressure. So, this gets interesting. I planned the locations of the "muffler"s and pre-drilled holes in the belly pan to hold the "muffler" hangers. They are about 6 inches inboard of the outer lip.

wider context view

As the pipe leaves the bus, it turns 90* towards the front. I cut it off at that point with a hacksaw, cutting the heat sleeve with scissors first. With the help of a stainless steel reducer (3/4" to 1" with the 3/4 inch inside the cut pipe), I mated the cut-off pipe to 2 "mufflers" in series, connected by a cylinder of HVAC flashing held in place with pipe clamps. Yes, that sounds hinky, but it is actually quite solid. To the end of the second muffler, I slid on the clean end of the included exhaust pipe I had just cut off over the "muffler" end, leaving the ragged cut end free. I added more heat sleeve and another clamp at the "muffler". I then turned the pipe into a "J" so it faced more towards the rear and stopped to test, and to get noise readings. The pictures here paint a better picture than my prose.

Inbound Combustion Air
Apparently, these heaters don't need an air cleaner. I find that very hard to believe. Still, going with it, I decided to remove the air hose from the intake side of the heater, using the large cavity between the floor and the belly pan to act like an insulator against really bad stuff getting in there. I was having fit issues anyway, and this removed the thing that was in the way. I will be attaching a bit of window-screen to the intake, but for testing purposes, it currently has no filter. That's how JohnMcK does it without a filter, so I'll not argue. As it is, there are a few spots where air could get in, but only one 1" diameter opening so the route to the inside of the heater would require some form of intelligence to get there.

Testing

motorbike muffler added

With the exhaust completed enough for testing, I fired up the heater and let it run. I checked dB levels (reads as "quiet house" within a few feet of the exhaust, bouncing around 55dB) and wandered around for a sense of sound impact. I am unable to hear the fuel pump at all outside of 15 feet (5 meters) away. The sound of the heater running disappears into outside noise after another few feet. Within the bus, the pump cannot be heard over the sound of the fan except at the lowest setting. I let it run for about an hour and the temperature inside the bus climbed from 12C (about 54*F) to 20C (68*F), while at the 3 pulse-per-second setting, around the mid-point. I kept getting in and getting out, leaving the slider open sometimes, etc, so this is not scientific. Still, since the bus had not been over 60*F since last Summer, I consider a nearly 15*F increase a fairly significant feat. It will be interesting to see how effective it is when I really just let it be. One thing worth noting: the exhaust has no smell. None, and no smoke either. I cupped my hands at the exhaust outlet and breathed it in just to see if I could get any smell. Nope. That's efficient.

My last test was to fire up the engine of the bus to confirm that I did not interrupt the fuel supply to the engine. Obviously, that's kind of important and arguably could have been done sooner. Honestly, I wasn't sure he would fire up, but he did on the first try. Good boy, Hapy. I drove around the cul-de-sac but he dropped into that 1200RPM can't-read-the-throttle mode, so I parked him again. Looks like he's trying to tell me that the next thing needs to be resolving his electrical.

Well, I think that's enough talk of the Parking Heater. It really isn't completely done. I did the install of the motorbike muffler with exhaust hangers to help make the exhaust look nicer. It does end up a little quieter, now in the low 50's at the boost or high-power setting rather than low 50's at mid-power, so that's good. You can see how it appears in the picture to the side here. Not sure it actually looks that much better, but the cut off pipe looked pretty janky. I will be installing a false-floor in the cabinet so it can be used as a cabinet again. I will be attaching the power selector switch to the bus as well as running a power line from the luxury battery. I intend to put some kind of heat insulation on the register to retain heat, and might add some air baffles to direct the air flow a little. I don't think any of those warrant a 6th post, though. Then again, one or more might appear on their own if I have nothing else going on, or they become more involved than I thought. Oh, one last thing: I found a guy who makes an after-market thermostat/controller for these things, called Afterburner. I intend to experiment with one of those, if I can get my hands on one.

Thanks, as always, for following along. If you have more questions about these heaters, I fully endorse JohnMcK's videos. They are incredibly informative.

Parking Heater (Part 4)

Picking up where I left off last time, I was in the middle of the install of one of those cheap eBay parking heaters that are a rip-off of those $1000US jobs. I have a partially constructed custom heat register, the fuel line run from the engine compartment through the fuel pump to the heater unit. I have holes bored for the combustion air intake and exhaust. Last, I have the unit grounded and the 12V source almost together. So, while lots of things are not done, they are all just a few steps away. I didn't quite finish it today.

Exhausting

making register

I had already worked the combustion air intake hose up through the holes from under the bus. This took a few trips in and out of the bus to get the hose to bend and not hang up as it passed through. If you have a helper, even a reluctant one, this is where s/he would really give lots of help for very little effort. With sufficient hose pushed through to the inside of the cabin (I gave myself about 6"), I switched to the exhaust. First, I slid the bendy stainless steel hose into the heat sleeve. The sleeve is 3' long, and it is much longer than the stainless steel exhaust hose/pipe; I will have extra. I got the sleeve as tight around the pipe as I could and slid it up through the holes from under the bus. These holes were more aligned and a little larger than the intake, so it went through with little fanfare.

Once through, I could start connecting the air and exhaust to the heater. The air hose was more willing to be managed, and connected without much effort. The exhaust, however, took some doing, but I got it on, and the sleeve pulled all the way to the top, and then clamped the pipe and sleeve to the heater output with one clamp. In the process, the fuel line popped off, so it needed to be re-attached. For now, the exhaust and intake pipes are laying on top of a car-ramp so they aren't sitting on the pavement in the rain. I'll button them up to the underside once everything is working and after the noise experiments indicate what muffler solution to use.

Heater In

heater in

With the underside connections to the heater all buttoned up, I was ready to press the heater into place. First, I set the heater above the hole and pushed a little bit. Say, 10 pounds of pressure. Then, similar to the run-around I did for the air intake, I got under the bus and tugged on the hoses a little bit. Again 10 pounds of pressure or less. This took some of the excess bends out so I could then press the heater home from inside. I checked again from below just to be sure. I then attached the unit to the bottom of the cabinet with a pair of wood screws and then tried to shake the heater. It wouldn't budge.

Fueled
Next, I needed to complete the connections for the fuel. I had intended to locate the "T" close to the front (front is front) of the engine compartment, but once I got in a position to work on it, I made a small change. The large clear filter was already in a fairly good space, and I figured that I could fit the "T" just downstream of the filter without cutting any fuel hoses. I took the "T", pressed on a short (2" long) stretch of hose on one end, and a 2" stretch of 4mm hose on the small part of the "T". I clamped the other end of the 4mm hose to the trimmed end of the heater fuel line. Then, I squeeze-sealed-off the hose between the clear filter and the large filter with a vice-grip. I was now able to remove the line from the clear filter and then quickly connected the short stretch of hose from the "T" to it. To the other end of the "T" I connected the vice-gripped line. All clamps were snugged down and then I removed the vice-grip, but fuel didn't really move around. The net result has fuel leaving the small clear filter and immediately enter the "T" fitting. The large end of the "T" continues on to the Caterpillar filter while the small (4mm) end of the "T" routes to the heater.

Priming

foamed and screwed

I should note that the picture in the last post of the fuel pump needed to change. The directions give no indication of the fuel flow direction, and that pump is one-directional, pulling towards the end which shares the electrical plug. That's the case with mine and while they may not all be the same, my viewings on YouTube of the little heater professor (John McK) implies that they are all the same. I was also alerted (again by Hal) about the orientation of the fuel pump in my post a few weeks back. So, I re-checked it, and he was right, I had it practically horizontal, and they need to be approaching vertical for the fuel to lubricate the piston inside the pump and for the little bubbles created during the pumping to float up into the heater. I disconnected the heater-side from the pump, shifted things around, and re-connected.

I left the fuel line at the supply-side of the fuel pump disconnected, however. To this line, I connected the Mity-Vac to fill it with fuel. Once the Mity-Vac jar was steadily filling, I stopped the vacuum and quickly reconnected the line to the pump. I checked the clear filter in the engine bay and it was full, so we should have a nice tight system now.

Complete Heat Register
When I last touched the heat register, it was a box, but it needed to be sealed and it still needed a 3" pipe connection. I got a 4" connector from Home Depot, and cut it open. I could have probably used some basic flashing, but thought the dimples and wrinkles would help hold the air hose on. I fit the cut connector into the hose, marked with a pen and then cut the connector so it fit a 3" diameter hose. I also cut about 1-1/2 inches off the end to make more maneuvering room in the cabinet. I fit the connector into the register from the inside, and pushed the seating tabs down. Once set, I used metal HVAC tape on all of the seams on the register, including the connector. You can see the finished result in the top picture.

register completed

My rough forming of the register resulted in the outlet not being completely flat. I tweaked it for a few minutes and got it close, but I knew I couldn't get it perfectly flat. To resolve, I put a thin strip of foam along the edge which would be pressed against the cabinet. Then, I threaded one screw per side through the register edge to hold it to the cabinet. I took it out to the bus, and pressed it into service.

Last for the heat outlet, I needed to run the air hose from the heater to the register. This was relatively simple. I laid out the hose to check length, cut it with a pair of scissors, and clamped it in. It took some wrestling.

Finish Electrical
With the fuel ready and the heated air routed, all that was left was connecting the final electrical bits. First, I completed the wiring from the fuel pump. By now, the switch I had ordered had arrived, so the rest was just as easy. I connected the center post to the heater supply-side and the fused 12V from the main battery to one of the outer posts. Then, I plugged in the controller and the heater.

Tests

The moment had arrived. After charging the battery, I flipped the switch, and heard the fuel pump fire up. Then, the fan on the heater started. Cool air blew through the register and out onto my boots. I felt the air flow and there was positive, consistent air movement all along the grate. But, the air was not warming up. Huh. So, I tried to figure out the interface, and I really couldn't. I knew from John McK's videos that the way you changed the temperature was to increase the speed of the fuel pump, so I messed with that a little bit. Turned out, I was just impatient. Once the glow plug was up to temp and fuel had made it down that last stretch of hose from the pump, the diesel started to fire and I started to get heat. Curious about the noise, I checked the driver side of the bus. It sits below 65dB, floating up and down depending on the fuel pump speed. At the lowest setting, my little phone app decoded the dB to "quiet house". At the mid-setting (3.3 on the pump speed) is decoded to "quiet street". This is without a baffle on the air intake, and the exhaust without any muffling while I was standing, semi-stooped over with a phone a few feet away from the hose ends. More on how these ends are dealt with next time.

Thanks, as always, for following along--

Parking Heater (Part 3)

Continuing the story of getting some heat into the bus while camping or parked. In Part 1, I touched on why I was doing this, how I arrived at the unit I got and what I needed to get to augment the kit so it was a viable install. In Part 2, I got into the planning, preparation and the beginning of the install. Today, I'm deep into it. This project is a little strange in that you can only go so far with one aspect before you need to get the others caught up. You'll see what I mean.

Heat Register

register mock-up

After all the destruction and time spent lying in puddles under the bus in my last post, I wanted something a little more creative and less wet. So, I moved inside the bus with a couple of cereal boxes from my recycling bin to mock-up a heat register. Judge me all you want, but Frosted Mini-Wheats are a great TV snack. Anyway, I set the heater in place and put a piece of cardboard underneath, roughly aligning with the steel grate opening. This is where science goes away and art comes in. I used the 3" vent that is supplied with the kit to give me perspective of where the register inlet would be. I considered the backside of the register could not touch the heater unit or there could be vibration noise. After a few cycles of test, measure, cut, test again, I arrived at a 3-dimensional cardboard model that fit, and should deliver the warmed air without leaking (see picture to the right).

To convert the cardboard model to something real, I just needed some HVAC flashing (be careful; it's sharp! Ask me how I know). I had intended to follow the same pattern I did with the trunk carpet in Oliver (see MGB Trunk Carpet Part 1), but it turned out my 3-dimensional model was really only suitable as a basis for taking measurements. The picture of the measurements is shared here in case someone else wants to do something like this. With dimensions in hand, I considered a few ways to go after it while I tried the measurements on another recycler-bound cereal box (Honey Nut Cheerios this time. Again, a very good TV snack). I cut one top/bottom and then the sides. The sides were simple rectangles 3" wide, spanning from the large outlet around to where the hose fit in. I concluded that I could do something very similar to the carpet on the speaker box, limiting the number of seams, and therefore cuts and extra tabs, etc.

register design

I decided to depend on DAP contact cement to hold the register together, and use no fasteners to hold it together. DAP can handle up to 180* and the heater specs say its output temp peaks at 135* so it should be a good match. Based on the website for the contact cement, I can bond the steel-to-steel with it. Then I'll go back around with HVAC tape inside the register so it is fully sealed. Considering that this is for functionality not a show-piece, I may even wrap the whole thing in that thin closed-cell insulation I have used around the various cars to help keep the hot air as hot as possible before it flows into the cabin.

With all of this in mind, I re-planned and drew a top, sides and bottom as 2 pieces on the HVAC sheet. That sheet was not quite large enough for all of it, so I created an interruption at the 3" hole, making for the smallest additional seam I could manage. The unit folded together along the 8" stretch that runs from the rear edge of the vent-to-bus to the edge furthest to the driver's side. This eliminated the longest seam. The other seams had small tabs that folded inside. I used my bench vise to help keep the lines straight as I folded the flat steel into a 3-dimensional box. The drawing can be seen in the picture to the right.

Once assembled, I test fit into the cabinet and then shifted focus again. I still need to integrate a 3" fitting / bib / inlet for the hose to attach to.

Fuel Pump Electrical

planning the cut

With a plan for the heat register, I looked at the wiring bundle. It's fairly simple. There are 3 plugs and 2 thick wires (12V supply and ground). The 3 plugs are relatively straightforward: there's a round one for the LED thermostat, a 2-pin rectangular one for the fuel pump and a large one for the heater. All three are keyed to only go one one way. The fuel pump cable is about 6 feet long, so I ran out most of it, and cut all but the last foot of it off the loom so I could thread it up into the bus from underneath. I drilled a 1/4" hole behind the auxiliary fuse box (driver's side under the rock-n-roll bed) and then slid under the bus. I plugged in the fuel pump and then ran the wire up over supports and then up through the hole, leaving very little slack, but not taught either.

The other wiring is all inside the bus. So, I climbed back inside the bus, and fished the fuel pump cable through the service opening near the rear driver tire well back into the rear of the fridge cabinet. I threaded the cable through to where the heater unit is being installed, and left things like that while I finished every thing else. I figured that I could decide to shorten wires once the heater is set, but doing it now, when the register isn't plumbed, the heater isn't bolted down, etc, was premature. It was around this point when I bolted the steel pan/sheet to the bottom of the heater. This seemed important (they wouldn't have included it otherwise). I figure it is some kind of heat shield or something.

Fuel Sourced
I ran a stretch of rubber/viton fuel line from the plastic tubing within the belly pan space to the inlet on the heater. I gave myself just enough hose so I could lift and tilt the heater to access the line. There is very little extra fuel line. The other end of the plastic fuel line for the heater is routed to the engine compartment. I intend to move the big clear plastic filter in the main fuel line down to the point where the main fuel line from the fuel tank enters the engine compartment, which is pretty much right next to the plastic line for the heater. Immediately after the filter, I will add the "T" for the heater. Rather than get into that now, I stayed with the electrical. Besides, it's cold and raining outside, and inside the bus was dry and out of the wind.

Main Power and Ground

heater grounded, but blurry

Power should have been the most straight-forward, but I just can't do simple, I guess. Consider that Hapy has 2 batteries during his in-use months: the main battery and the luxury battery. When we're camping, I'll want to source the heater off the luxury battery so we don't strand ourselves somewhere. When driving or when Hapy is off season, just parked in the driveway like now, I will want to run the heater off the only battery that's there: the main. So, with a plan to integrate a switch, I ran a 14ga (that's what came with the heater) wire from an unused battery-top 20A fuse along the familiar route: above the rear engine hatch, through the spare tire well and then forward into the little storage cabinet next to the rock-n-roll bed. From here, I ran a separate wire through to the heater, and spliced that into the harness. I had to pause that progress, since I don't have a switch handy, so I'll get back to this later. I will run a third wire from the switch to the luxury fuse box eventually. To keep things safe, I unplugged the 3-wire plug from the battery-top fuse box. I should also point out that the kit arrived with a 20A fuse, so the battery-top set-up is on-frame with the design.

For the ground, I looked around and through the various gaps in the cabinet for some exposed steel. I figured I could get at one of the side supports but that wasn't fruitful. So, I looked elsewhere. The cabinet floor had a 1" round hole just in front of where the heater unit was sitting. I think this was a drain hole for an ice-box option in the late-70's Westy. I was able to bore a hole into the steel floor there, scrape off the top paint and then steel-screw the ring terminal on the grounding wire (also 14ga) to the floor. It almost looks planned.

Intake

not an advert for Pepsy

At this point, I started to feel like this project was nearing its end. I needed to get the air intake attached to the air hose and the air hose attached to the air filter. The air hose is paper, and the aftermarket filter assumes that it is wrapping around the outside of something relatively firm, like a pipe. Those 2 characteristics don't align well. To remedy, I threaded the top of a soda-pop bottle into the foil/paper hose. Once it was all the way in, I cut the bottle off with a hacksaw. This provided the firm hose end that the air filter could attach to, so I forced it on and tightened it into place with a clamp.

I had intended to route this between the belly pan and the floor. Ya see, I have an old hole in the floor for the sink-drain when the '79 interior was installed, and I thought I would be able to maintain the air filter through that hole. I was mistaken, and probably ought to patch that hole. Anyway, the air intake hose provided in the kit was not long enough, and left me reaching around for it through that hole. There was no way I would be able to remove and re-install a filter that way. So, I was back to boring a hole. Similar to the exhaust hole, I used another drain hole as the center point for a hole saw. This hole is inboard of the exhaust hole by a few inches so the air hose will have a couple of extra bends in it. Recall that the intake hole was made smaller by the frame support. I decided to cut the steel floor between the holes so the intake could fit. Then, I sent the air hose up from the bottom. I decided to wait on attaching it to the underside of the belly pan until after I had the exhaust at least this far.

After all this, I got the comment from our old friend Hal. He indicated that the "air cleaner" is really nothing more than a noise baffle for the intake. He expressed concern that I might actually create an issue with a real air filter, so I removed the air filter. I will be wrapping the intake with some window screen or something to keep the flies out, but will not be using the air filter I got.

As usual, this post got long. So, I'm going to stop here. More next time and thanks, as always, for following along-

Parking Heater (Part 2)

Today's post continues my process of introducing an experimental parking heater into the microbus. My main driver for this was our 4Peaks Music Festival experiences. Even though it is around the Summer Solstice, every year, the overnight temperature gets down into the mid-30F's (that's like 2*C for our non-US friends). That had caused us to us the Little Buddy heater a lot, heating up the tented-zone outside the bus while hanging out and then again inside the bus before going to bed. I figured if we had something dedicated to the bus, the little propane heater could just focus on keeping the hang-out zone tolerable. Aaand... the bus could be pre-warmed either while we were away at the stages or while we were sleeping.

Planning

blurry picture of test fit

It all starts with determining where you want to install it. I chose the old fridge cabinet because it had a false floor as well as a metal grate I could send the warmed air through. The air supply-side would just pull from under the cabinets and the bed; these are the coldest zones, so that should work great. The fuel and exhaust needed to get through the wood floor of the cabinet, the steel floor of the bus and the belly pan unique to the early 70's bus. I figured that I could source the combustion air from between the floor and the belly pan since there were multiple holes that would allow air to freely flow.

I will "T" off the diesel line from the main tank, and not use the kit-included second tank just for the heater. I figure I can introduce the "T" after the large clear filter so I won't need the tiny one shipped with the kit that does not look as hardy.

Preparation
Before I could start installing, I needed to remove the false-floor. I would have liked to reuse that floor, but the way it was installed made that impossible. So, with a 1" paddle bit on my drill, I bore multiple holes into the floor until I could smash it into pieces. Once the chunks were out, I cleaned up all the edges, removed the little bits of fasteners (staples and short wood screws) and shop-vac'd the thing out. Once it was gone, I could really evaluate my options. There were only so many ways the heater could go in, so I ended up with it just inside the outer wall and an inch or so in front of the rear wall (see blurry picture). This created the most room for the air intake while creating the least dramatic curve to the outlet hose. The picture doesn't really show it, but there are 1/2" gaps along the rear edge and a modest sized hole along the outer edge near the front. So, air will be able to enter without fighting a vacuum condition.

The outlet hose will still need to bend about 270* before entering a heat register that I will need to custom construct. For a mental picture, imagine a floor register in your house. It changes a 4" (or greater) diameter air hose into a rectangular shape. I could bore a 3" hole in the front of the cabinet, but I wanted this to be total stealth, and, honestly, this way was more fun. Most US housing is done with venting that is larger than 3" in diameter, so this would be a total fabrication.

Boring

fuel pump install

The heater unit delivers with a metal sheet that rests on the floor between the heater and whatever surface it is bolted to. I loosely taped the metal sheet to the heater and when I had set the heater where I wanted it, I pushed the metal sheet off, and I had a template for where the holes needed to go. I marked them with a pen, found the center-point of the holes and drilled a pilot hole in the wood cabinet floor at that center-point. I grabbed a hole-cutter for a 1-1/4" hole and drilled out the holes for the intake and exhaust. With a hand saw, I connected them together, making one single oval. I test fit the heater to make sure it dropped into the hole as intended.

With the same bit, I cut holes in the floor of the bus directly beneath the two I had just cut. The front hole went through beautifully. The rear hole, however, was partially blocked by a support running side to side. I'm a little concerned for how the air intake will need to adjust for that. With the holes in the floor, I could see one of the drain holes below and a little in front of the front hole I had just cut. So, I went underneath and bore a hole, using that drain as the center-point. I will route the exhaust out there.

Fuel
After a couple attempts, I arrived at routing the fuel from the front right corner of the engine compartment back along the stock fuel line path, then over the suspension support, along the emergency brake tube, past the nose of the transmission and then over to the passenger side along a cross support. To the rear side of this support nearest the passenger side frame rail, I attached the heater's fuel pump (see picture). The plastic fuel line would pass over the top of the frame rail and enter the space between the belly pan and the floor between the frame rail and the floor. Once I had the fuel line laid out and zip-tied in place, I installed the line to the pump with short sections of 4mm fuel line. I will caulk around where the fuel line passes into the belly pan space so vibrations do not slowly create a weakness in the line.

I figure I am maybe 1/3 done on this, so there's plenty left to do. I have the electrical, finishing the fuel, fabricating, installing and routing to a heat register, the air intake and exhaust. Then, I will test the heater, measuring the noise level and experiment with suppression ideas. I figure it'll be 2 more posts before it's all done at this rate.

As always, thanks for following along and more next time-

Parking Heater (Part 1)

Okay, yeah. So I said I was going to be gone for a bit and then the very next week I go and start a marathon posting? WTF?! Well, this project isn't done yet, so some things I mention may get redone later in the series. Let's see...

So, What Am I Doing Now?
Having a heater in your camper while you're camping is nothing new. In fact, having one in your VW microbus is nothing new. For many years, versions of the campers had a gasoline eberspacher heater that drew from the main tank. If maintained well, I've heard these work very nicely. I have a healthy respect / fear of gasoline and gas fires, so I never got one, but have looked at the diesel ones for big rig trucks pretty much since the day I started the TDI conversion. They were running in the $1000US range, which was simply too rich for me. Since then, the design has been reverse-engineered by knock-off companies, and you can get one for around $150US. If that seems too good to be true, I'm sure you're right. I took the limited-money-risk plunge to find out.

Diesel Heater

nicked from eBay

A diesel heater is basically a kerosene heater. Fuel is sourced either from an independent source, or you "T" into your fuel system. That fuel line has it's own little pump that feeds the heater. The heater, in turn, ignites the fuel with a small glow plug, drawing combustion air and pushing exhaust outside of your vehicle. The air it is heating is usually sourced inside the vehicle. The unit is controlled with either a simple knob or an LED panel for a thermostat.

In this case, the combustion air intake and exhaust are 1-inch diameter pipes. The heat comes and goes through a 3-inch diameter pipes. I ordered one off eBay for $140US that looks a lot like the one pictured here.

What's in the Box
It arrived quickly, and it is packaged relatively well. The kit included things like zip-ties and clamps, implying that everything you needed was all in the box. If you were going to use the supplied 10L fuel-tank, maybe everything was there. Sort of. There was fuel tubing, a small fuel filter, the fuel pump, the wiring harness, LED screen, the heat unit itself, of course, a paper-ish tube for the intake (plus a crappy plastic air filter) and a corrugated stainless-steel tube for the exhaust. It even included a small (maybe 3.5 inches by 5 inches by 1 inch thick) rectangular "muffler". I quote it because I could look through it unimpeded. Last, the kit includes a poorly-translated instruction booklet.

What's NOT in the Box
So, what wasn't there? The kit does not include flexible fuel line to connect the various fuel bits together. The fuel tubing is stiff and will not fit around the inlet nor outlet of the fuel pump, for example. A short stretch of rubber/viton fuel line (I had some 4mm VW stuff from one of the fuel line replacements I did) fits around both the fuel tube and the fuel pump and the included fuel line clamps from the kit fit perfectly.

The kit does not include a "T" for you to tie into your existing fuel system though the instructions mention it. I recognize that all fuel systems are different, so any "T" they included could have been wrong. I found one for $7US delivered.

The kit does not include any kind exhaust temperature abatement. This could be hazardous since the heater unit is supposed to be installed inside the vehicle with the combustion air/exhaust venting outside. The exhaust is like your car exhaust in that it's going to get super hot. Wrapping that thing with something fire-safe is very important. I found some for about $17US.

Equipment Considerations
I mentioned the crappy air filter. It is a plastic cylinder that fits on the end of the paper air inlet tube. On one end, there are small holes, like on a salt-shaker. The paper tube fits in the other end. In between, there are long slots cut into the plastic. I couldn't tell if there was a medium inside, but I could look through the little holes and see through to the air-tube inlet. Yeah.. that's garbage, so I bought a washable air filter like this for $8US. We camp in high desert, so dust is something we need to contain. Little no-see-um flies could get through the one they supplied. Easy decision.

I also mentioned the "muffler". We don't camp in the wilderness where the noise of an appliance starting up would escape all notice. We camp in state parks and festival parking lots. We have neighbors. Those neighbors rightfully expect quiet hours to be observed, so if the heater unexpectedly starts up at 4AM, it needs to be virtually silent. That small hollow metal rectangle probably won't cut it. In fact, it might actually act like an amplifier. So, I bought this muffler for $23US designed for a motorbike. I will experiment with the different mufflers and may even experiment with muffler packing to see how quiet I can get the heater, testing with a decibel app on my phone.

Locating

refer fridge cabinet. note
false floor in lower left corner

The bus doesn't have a whole lot of extra space, at least not when compared to a full-size RV. I thought about putting the heater on the auxiliary battery tray in the engine compartment. This would expose it to the weather, and force me to put a 3 inch hole somewhere to get the heated air inside. I considered running it into the original stock plumbing but the instructions not-so-clearly say not to do that. So, I looked at locating in the kick-cabinet under the rock-n-roll bed. This had some issues as well. The power was readily available, since the deep cycle battery and fuse panel live there. I could bore holes through the floor for the fuel, combustion air and exhaust, and could source heat-air from right there. The challenge was finding a good location that wouldn't create weird routing for the heated-air hose, nor crazy routing of the exhaust under the bus. And, the whole operation, when combined with the deep-cycle battery, took up a lot of the space in that cabinet. When we camp, that cabinet holds handy things like the hatchet and propane, so I decided to look elsewhere.

Almost 9 years ago, I removed the refrigerator unit out of the cabinet, turning the cabinet into more storage (See from Fridge to Storage). We have used this cabinet to hold our emergency first aid kit, blankets, towels, paper products, etc. It is super useful. It also has a false bottom, from back when the old refer unit used to sit in there. That false-bottom is a little under 3 inches off the cabinet floor, which sits directly on the metal floor of the bus. I decided that I could raise the false floor a couple of inches, and set the heater between the false floor and the genuine floor. This plan would consume maybe 2 vertical inches of currently used space in that cabinet. If I remove the old insulation off the cabinet lid, I'd get some of that space back. One last hurdle: this portion of the floor has a belly pan beneath it. So, any hole I produce will need another hole in the belly pan. Ain't nuttin' easy.

Costs So Far
The running total for this experiment is
$140 - Diesel Heater
    $7 - Fuel Line "T"
  $17 - Exhaust Wrap/Sleeve
    $8 - Washable Air Filter
  $23 - Motorbike Muffler
$195 - Total

As usual, this post has already gotten long and I haven't actually started yet. Thanks for following along, and more next time-