Webasto woes, and a work around.

D

datsundrew

A2OC Donor
So this weekend I decided to try to sort out the heater on ORC, our tdi. I’ve post about this before and tried just about everything, and came to the conclusion there was a blockage in the heater matrix. Last winter we managed with the tepid heater, and my husband had a nightmare coming back to Heathrow airport late one frozen evening, where the screen kept freezing !!😱
having drained the system, I removed the webasto and identified the hose to the matrix, and the other hose to the back of the head. I tried blowing through the matrix and it was very difficult indeed. many attempts at blowing with an airline, filling the pipes with water and blowing through again saw blobs of white gunge and rusty particles, I probably repeated this 50 times blowing from alternate ends.
Eventually I could blow through it without the air line, so at this point I filled it with heating cleaner ( 1 bottle for up to 10 radiators, so I shot the lot in and left it overnight😂)
Sunday morning, and a flush through, and unexpectedly absolutely nothing untoward came out, so it’s either totally useless, or it’s clean?
The next step was to look at the webasto…..it’s never worked, and using VCDS there is also nothing there, no coms at all With the car.
I tried connecting a known working one, still nothing!
Having had these things apart a few times, I bought a manual + to pin 1 to switch on on eBay. These control boards were fitted to older units, and to ones used on boats etc. My plan was to build up the original unit from ORC, which is dead. Replace the board, check the glow plug and replace gaskets etc. I then set it up in the garage with a water tank, fuel, pump etc and connected it up……then a live feed to pin no1, and away it went!!😀
the water was soon up to 80 degrees where it slowed down to a quiet whirr. Fan bloody tastic!
 

Attachments

  • IMG_3325.jpeg
    IMG_3325.jpeg
    2.5 MB · Views: 65
  • IMG_3330.jpeg
    IMG_3330.jpeg
    2.8 MB · Views: 65
So now the next step was to transfer it to the car, remove the trigger wire from pin 2 on the car loom (think this is canbus driven and thougt it better to remove it in case it back fees somehow to the car?) figuring out how these plugs come apart and replacing the pins took some fathoming.😀
one last try before fitting it, as I wanted to establish if the heater core would actually work, so some temporary hoses to the matrix and I fired it up again, waited for the water to get hot, then ignition on and heater on, (forcing the fan to high as the car doesn’t see its hot enough) …….aaand……we have heat! Hoorah!!
next was to transfer it into the car, for anyone who has done this, it’s a right fiddle, and there’s an order to doing it, but it does get easier! Those bloody hose clips are a pain.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_3337.jpeg
    IMG_3337.jpeg
    2.8 MB · Views: 65
  • IMG_3338.jpeg
    IMG_3338.jpeg
    1.5 MB · Views: 57
  • IMG_3339.jpeg
    IMG_3339.jpeg
    2.6 MB · Views: 57
At that point I ran out of time. I did plug the car loom into it, (with its new pin to no1 added, and pin 2 disconnected ) and gave it power to pin 1, it started, and the pump at the back by the arch started ticking and it fired up again.
next job is get 2 cables into the cabin, one for the trigger pos, and one for a circulation pump at a later stage.
The plan is to have a simple switch via the ignition , if it’s cold, start up, and switch on!
when the trigger wire is off, the heater switches off and goes into cool down mode as it would if it actually worked in the car. It would be ideal to have this working as it should, but it doesn’t and I’ve run out of ideas, so for £100 for a control board seems like the next best thing, in fact possibly better as it car be operated at any time for a faster warm up?

I’ll hopefully have time one evening to try it out, fingers crossed.
i realise that the air line and heating cleaner was a risky move, and could have gone spectacularly wrong, but it wss looking like a dash out job anyway…..I even ordered a new matrix on Saturday night expecting the worst!
 
An update on this……I got to having another go with it in the car, and it turned out the battery was flat, and on its way out, and putting out 12.4 volts, not enough for the heater to allow its to fire up…doh!
a new battery fitted, and the webasto fired up immediately 😀
I timed it to see how quickly it would heat up, and it took 5 mins to get the coolant to 70 degrees…awesome!
these heaters are absolutely fantastic, and not actually complicated at all once you get your head around how it works.
I’m guessing that all the cars with non working webasto heaters aare due to problems with the car not communicating to fire it up, or a faulty glow plug in the heater, which is easy to replace. If the car won’t communicate then you could go the manual route I have gone by replacing the control board in the heater. Alternatively a rover 75 heater has a non canbus board, along with other rovers and Range Rovers.
 
The temperature sensor in mine keeps telling the the car its to hot, i re soldered the connections which worked fir about a week at it then reverted back saying it was to hot .... . which control board are you using ?
 
steveb said:
The temperature sensor in mine keeps telling the the car its to hot, i re soldered the connections which worked fir about a week at it then reverted back saying it was to hot .... . which control board are you using ?
Click to expand...
Available on eBay for around £100, or get a rover 75 or Landrover one as they are non can bus😀
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top