Cleaning Diesel Heater Glow Plug?

[tonyc07]

Has anyone any experience of cleaning forced air diesel heater glow plugs?

I have an Eberspacher 4DL thats been taking a hammering over the last couple of months & now it's starting to throw out soot. So I guess some of the fuel is not burning hot and clean?

Cheers.

 

[iangrant]

regardless of health and safety - petrol - take out the glow plug "cap" fill it with petrol let it soak a while and then set it alight.

ian

 

[VicS]

[ QUOTE ]
regardless of health and safety - petrol ........... then set it alight

[/ QUOTE ] Ok we trust you.

Its been tried before:

 

[tonyc07]

Mmmm, was thinking of a possibly less volatile solution!
Perhaps I will try the petrol with the plug removed from the boat first.

 

[iangrant]

errr, that goes without saying - did mine in the garden!!!!

 

[tonyc07]

Think I'll do the same.

Was there a much improved performance from the heater?

 

[iangrant]

excellent - no more smoke and it lit, mid you it was a webasto
don't dig around toooo much at the mesh
Ian [image]

[/image]

 

[Col]

Use Mr Muscle oven cleaner.

 

[colinroybarrett]

Petrol – doesn’t even light a bonfire, let alone clean out the hard-caked grot you will find in the combustion chamber - but it will sure as h”^l will probable blow the stack pipe (and probably the air intake pipes apart as well).

If not that is, take out your boat – VicS’s photo is absolutely right here.

The only cure is to strip the unit down properly and give it a ‘full de-coke’. You will find the mesh surrounding the burner will be about 3-5mm thick with hard burned on coke and all around the glow-plug hole as well. I found bashing it with a hammer to be the only way to remove the stuff. Then unfortunately you have shake out the loose bits of coke by twirling the exhaust chamber orientation around to dump it out of the chimney.

Unless; of course, you are running on some really tacky fuel?

We were advised, to run the unit very hard as ours is over-specked for the boat and spends most of it’s time on ‘low’ setting, which encourages coking up.

PM if you want help, I’ve ‘been there done that’