Day: April 22, 2018

Called out to Pillings lock marina. Webasto playing up – not starting up and for some time has been taking longer to warm up.

Main fault is that water has got inside the power plug and damaged a terminal in the plug and burnt one of the pins. This fault isn’t that uncommon and Webasto dealers would be changing the circuit board and plug (£300+). If the heater timer is left on it’s possible fuel is dumped into the exhaust as heater continually momuntarily switches on and then off as voltage at the pin drops out under glowpin load.

Only proper way to fix is to solder leads directly to the pins – cables properly soldered to the pins, sealed using adhesive lined heat shrink and then silicon which is hard to see in the photo. This is a 100% reliable fix.

The problem with the heater taking longer to warm up than normal is down to fuel supply issue. The original installer had T’d into the engine feed after a pre filter which is most likely partially blocked. This is a really common error and done to save time in the installation.

Best to install the Webasto fuel supply properly with dedicated feed taking diesel from around 6 inches off the bottom of the tank. Heater now runs perfectly.

Customer contacted me after speaking to a boater for whom I fitted a solar power kit previously. They wanted the best quality equipment so I fitted 2* LG335 panels with my mounting bracket kit and Victron 150/45 Smartsolar controller. 6mm cable from panels to controller and 35mm cable to batteries.

A curved Liverpool Boat/Orchard Marine roof which my brackets fit perfectly. Saw 610 Watts and over 40amps at 12V in mid day sun which is very good for April. Also install a Victron BMV700 battery monitor. Customer very pleased with the job.

An engineer had fitted a Webasto Thermo Top Z as a replacement for an Eberspacher D5W. The photo shows how badly the install was done – notice they’d used the original 24mm Eberspacher exhaust (Webasto 22mm), Eberspacher fuel pump (which has different pulse rate to the Webasto and heater running way too cool never getting up to temp), and connected Eberspacher 4mm fuel line to 5mm Webasto burner. Also see the header tank feeds outlet side of heater (not low pressure side of waterpump) and this always is a bad idea and making bleeding v difficult. The Thermo Top Z’s were fitted to Rover 75’s and Land Rover in early 2000’s. People will tell you settings are different  – running temp is slightly higher and cut off voltage is higher but this has no affect on how it will run if properly installed in a narrowboat. Only problem with the Thermo Top Z is control units can fail and they’re now nearly 20 yo.

I properly install a Webasto Thermo Top E kit. Steel upstand welded to the swim and heater mounted on rubber mounts. New isolation ball valve and Webasto copper fuel line kit. Hard to see in photos. Customer very happy with the work and noise from the heater through the boat kept and minimum.