irish.david wrote:I recently overhauled my eber and i think i have a pretty good understanding on how they work. As i've had a few PM's about it and it seems to be a recurring theme on here i'm putting together a rough guide to how i did it and a few ideas on solving the dreaded cutout on start problem. Hopefully it'll be ready in a few days but at the moment the cruise ship i'm working on is heading to Antarctica so we're all flat out to make sure we're going to comply with the ferocious environmental regulations down there so it might be a little longer.
To be continued.........
Dave
PS : Don't spend £50 on a sensor. You can get all the thermostatic switches at Farnell for a few quid.
Thats great Dave. Hopefully i might be able to get mine running.
My eber started giving me trouble about a year ago. It seemed to be drawing a lot of current, cutting out after only a few minutes on battery and finally not running at all. As these heaters are so old now and no shop wanted to know so I decided that I was going to strip it down and fix it myself.
The most important document I was able to find on the internet was a pdf with the file name "Eberspacher B2L-D2L Install Manual.pdf ." This has information about fitting and operating the eber and, most importantly, wiring diagrams. Anyone who wants to know anything technical about there eber should start here. I have a copy but am currently on a cruise ship near south America til the end of Feb and internet time is very expensive. If people can't find this document on the web let me know and I will email it to one person who can then distribute it. The following info applies to a B2L eber that was attached to a 1986 Syncro Westy Joker.
Before starting work take the earth strap off both the main and leisure battery. This is not strictly necessary but is a sensible precaution before doing any major work on your van. To remove your eber you need to do the following. Start by removing the "Black buzzing box" and the shelf it sits on underneath the bench. You should then have access to the main eber control unit and wiring. Unclip the control unit and pull the electrical plug out of the bottom. Then undo any other electrical connections so the cable that runs down the air inlet is free.
Next climb underneath the van and undo the combustion air pipe, the exhaust and the fuel line from the inside edge of the eber. On the back side of the eber the air inlet and hot air exhaust pipes should be removed. After that the 4 blots holding the eber to the chassis can be removed. Be careful of the little rubber vibration dampers as they can break easily if not handled with care. If you do break one it is possible to glue it with a good expoxy glue as they operate in compression, not tension. With those bolts off the eber can be removed from the van.
The eber casing can be removed by undoing the million or so little screws around the centre line where the casing join can be seen. At this point my memory is a little hazy so the best thing before taking anything apart is to pause and take a mental (or real) picture of how everything looks and fits together. Once you get the outer shell and inner shell off you should be able to see all the components from page 13 of the eber manual in front of you.
Out of all those bits the most important ones to change are the temperature switch, the safety thermal cutout switch and the heating coil switch (labelled numbers 3, 4 and 8 respectively on page 11 of the eber manual). These are simple normally closed switches that are designed to open at a set temperature. Over the years they get stuck, contacts go bad, ceramic case starts to break down etc. These are off the shelf and can be ordered from Farnell for a few quid each. Only problem is that Farnell has a min £20 order but I think that Ringo ordered a few sets so you might be able to get some off him. The Farnell ordering information is below:
Unfortunately I can't remember exactly which values go in what location so you'll need to note the markings on the thermoswitches you remove to get the temperature rating. Only one I know for sure is that the overheat sensor is the highest value.
The only other temperature sensor in there is a little thermistor that's in a little tube just before the suction side of the electric motor that draws air in from the van. This is used by the thermostat to get the temperature of the air in the van so it knows if more or less heat is required. As this has no moving parts its normally pretty reliable and probably won't need replaced. You can check it by measuring the resistance between pins 2 and 3 of the electrical plug that went to the thermostat unit. While measuring the resistance get the thermistor between 2 fingers and the heat from your hand should make the resistance change. At the moment I've no idea what the resistance value should be for room temperature. Maybe anyone who gets this far could post what value they measured and we'll get an idea of what a "good" value is.
Next thing to do is to check the coil of the glow plug. Remove the glow plug, making note of what electrical connections went where, and inspect. Mine just needed a good clean but if yours looks too far gone it might need replaced. I think you can get them from Gunzl in Germany. You also need to measure the resistance between the spade connectors to check the heating coil. You should measure a small resistance. If you get an open circuit or a dead short you need a new glow plug.
After reinstalling the glow plug you can start boxing it back up. If you are feeling really confident you can strip it down further but if things have gone badly enough that this is necessary, you're probably better off getting a replacement eber. Re-installation is the opposite of removal (just more fiddly) but don't put the BBB shelf or unit on yet.
The number one reason for eber problems is low voltage cutout on startup. The reason for this is that when the eber starts up it needs to use the glow plug to heat the incoming combustion air so it doesn't just condense the petrol vapour on the walls of the combustion chamber causing an explosion risk. Glow plugs use a hell of a lot of power as they're basically little electric heaters. On startup the petrol eber will draw about 12A and the diesel 20A. The idea is that when they get up to temperature the heat in the eber means the glow plug isn't necessary and is shut off so the current consumption drops to just over 1A.
The problem occurs in this startup period when a combination of a battery not fully charged and cable losses cause the voltage AT THE EBER dropping to under 10.5v which causes it to shut down. Another possible cause of this is the thermostat switch that controls the glow plug in the petrol ebers being faulty and keeping the glow plug on even though it should have shut off. This puts a huge drain on the battery which eventually drops under the cutoff voltage stopping the eber. Luckily, if you've just followed the steps above, you've replaced the thermoswitches with new working ones.
The reason for the leisure battery not being fully charged are addressed in another story I wrote that's hidden in the Wiki under "Heavy duty battery charging." I still maintain that in vehicles as old as the ones we drive any long cable run that has to carry more than 10 - 20A should be replaced. Mocki has mentioned a solution by moving the starting battery to the engine bay but in my opinion that's more of a band aid than a solution and would actually make the leisure battery charging worse as well as reducing the voltage to the electrical equipment in the van (eg headlights, heater) when under load.
That being said, I do appreciate that it is a pain in the a*** running a new cable the length of the van so I'll focus on the eber cable losses. The eber manual states that the maximum cable loss from the battery to the eber is not to be more that 0.5V. This means that under startup the max resistance of the cable from the battery to the eber can be calculated as follows:
Petrol 0.5/12 = 0.042 Ohms
Diesel 0.5/20 = 0.025 Ohms
As you can see it doesn't take much for the cable to degrade enough so the eber won't start. A good test is to measure the voltage at the eber during startup. Connect everything up but don't put the eber control unit back into it's clip. Get a multimeter set on VDC and hold the probes in pins 3 and 4 on the electric plug on the control unit and switch the eber on. The voltage you read is the one the eber sees so if it dips anywhere near 10.5v then you're in trouble. If you're really flash and have 2 meters you can put one across the leisure battery and then try again. The difference between the readings is the cable loss.
There are 2 solutions. The first one is to replace the cable from the battery to the eber. This would be a huge nightmare as you need to remove all the kitchen units and would take ages. Not recommended.
The easiest thing to do is to add another 12v battery under the bench next to the BBB shelf. This has a number of avantages. You get more capacity in your leisure battery system, the new battery isn't likely to have too much high current use between it and the original leisure battery so cable losses are minimised and you have a really short run of cable between it and the eber so the eber voltage won't ever drop under 10.5v even with the glow plug in use.
All you need to do is run an earth strap from the chassis to the negative terminal and connect both the +12v supply from the BBB to the leisure battery and the 12v supply to the eber to the positive terminal and you're set. I used a 63Amp.hr car battery and built a wooden shelf over it but if you're concerned about space you could just as well use a small 12v leisure battery from a golf cart or something. It's just basically be used as a buffer between the leisure battery and the eber.
As far as I can see I've covered most of the things that people seem to have trouble with. I would have put pictures up if I had any but unfortunately I won't be able to take any until March. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask.
Dave
PS: I know some people go to some lengths to "balance" the combustion and exhaust side. My personal feeling is that this really isn't necessary. The manual states that as long as the combustion intake pipe is less than 1.5m long and the exhaust is less than 2m you'll be fine.
Farnell - are quick - the bits turned up this morning. Hopefully i will get a chance to get the eber out this week.
Im talking about the D1LC compact here:
Interesting thing is that the DL1C compact manual only really talks about two sensors - the overheat sensor and the flame sensor. There looks to be another sensor going to the blower - but for some reason the manual doesn't talk about it. I was thinking that the sensors relate like the following (this is a complete guess so please discuss)
Im thinking:
Flame sensor = opening:250°C
Overheat sensor = opening:100°C
Sensor on blower motor (not sure about this as the manual doesnt talk about this one) = opening:50°C
Im not sure that the D1LCc and the BL1C on the westie are the same - so its possible that these arent the same sensors. I will try and dig up the part numbers for the BL1C and see if they are the same.
Anyway, its Christmas eve and i've got loads of stuff to do in preparation for tomorrow - so this will have to wait!
I messed up by buying the bits from farnel identified by Irish David above - they are for the B2L/D2L (as David indicated) - NOT for the D1LC compact!!
So, Mocki, i guess you wont be wanting these bits!!
If anyone wants a set - let me know. It will be about £10 including postage and the cost of a jiffy bag.
There are two sensors on the D1LCc - the overheat sensor and the flame sensor. These are not switches like the ones i bought from farnel - i suspect they are thermistors (im pretty sure they are). Anyway, they have a resistance of 1.1k at ambient room temperature - i havent a clue what there ranges are.
So, what i am going to do now, is as stated before, change the overheat sensor (which i suspect is broken on my eber) with a 1.1k ohm resistor and see if that fixes my problem.
If it does, then im going to spend the £50 and get a new sensor
