PTC heater....

bretti_kivi said:
alternator is already 120A or 140A for the diesels IIRC. The original aux heater is a better way to do it, but it's more complex to build which is why I'm sure this was done.

- Bret
Click to expand...
I agree but retrofitting it is a pain and my car has an electronic heater so ?
 
this is why my petrol doesn't have it yet... got Webasto / Eberspächer on the Octy and wouldn't miss it for the world. Great piece of kit. Press "go", wait 10 minutes and the car's starting to get warm.. or wait 20 and then it's toasty. Awesome. Also drinks about 1l/h, which is acceptable in my world. I can turn it on from the office, get ready to leave, heed nature's call, sort myself out and by the time I'm downstairs it's really got a head start. Or at the airport just set it to be done 30 min after arrival time and when I get there, the car's warm. Been so long since I needed to do that...

There is a kit available online to convert from just a heater to a full aux system.
 
If it’s driveway heating could you not fit an electric block heater and a circulating pump (if you don’t want to run the engine)?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
don't even need the pump if it's DEFA, just a block heater. Then add an interior socket for comfort. They're not as fast as the Aux heater, though.
 
interesting read, what I thought about recently is adding external timed switch to operate heater relays so I can also have heater on in the morning ambient temps below 10deg but above mentioned 5-6deg
 
It’s possible to have this functionality, or at least to adjust the temperature thresholds with a ECU flash.

On cars with a 900w heater you can also adjust the alternator and voltage thresholds. On 1500w cars that is controlled internally by the heater module
 
Last edited:
Just remember the PTC heater is a huge current draw, 900 Watts = 75 amps, while 1,500 = 125 amps. I think you'd want a higher power alternator, and a very good battery.
Mac.
 
Yes of course, these limits were put in place for a reason, so there is only so much improvement you can make.

The 1500w system is actually “safer” in this regard, as it automatically draws enough power to load the alternator 90-95%. So it will only supply as much heat as is safe to do so
 
a-zwo said:
Yes of course, these limits were put in place for a reason, so there is only so much improvement you can make.

The 1500w system is actually “safer” in this regard, as it automatically draws enough power to load the alternator 90-95%. So it will only supply as much heat as is safe to do so
Click to expand...
Also remember that the engine ECU needs to be using code block 00002 for either Webasto OR electric heater to be operable. If it is in code block 00005 (sometimes used for performance tunes or alternate maps) the heater will not activate. This was established largely by Paul @depronman last year if I'm not hugely mistaken.
 
Yeah it’s in this thread https://www.a2oc.net/community/inde...s-own…-vcds-enabled.54171/page-15#post-552964

It’s possible to make it work with both coding’s on all cars, but it needs the correct settings changing in the file. The ECU does have a setting to say if the car has climatronic or not, but you can’t change it with VCDS. It is hardcoded into the ECU. I had a theory about it maybe working on non climate cars by default, but Paul’s testing proved that wrong on his car :)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top