Eberspacher Conundrum

[Dockhead]

My Eberspacher agonies, which started the very first year nine years ago of my ownership of this boat, continue.

The Hydronic 10 has blown its control board -- again. This comes two years after the £700 burner tube replacement. Every year or two it's something. And now you can't even buy the ridiculously fragile and ridiculously overpriced control board -- the heater is no longer officially supported, and Kruegers have declared it "not repairable". Less than two years after I paid them £700 to replace the burner tube.

I can't mess around with this right now because I am sailing to Iceland and Greenland this summer, and Heizung muss sein. I've got to knock this in the head. One approach would be to just buy a new MII Hydronic 10 (or 12) from Krueger for £2000, but that will put a big dent in the budget.
share
At various times over the years of agony I acquired two more Hydronic 10's -- an old corroded one for parts, and a new MII Hydronic 10, take off from an Iveco truck and bought cheap on Fleabay.

What I would really like to do is to put the new MII into action, but the problem is that, unbeknownst to ignorant me when I bought it, the Eberspachers made as OEM for truck makers don't share manuals, pin-outs, or part numbers. All is proprietary. And I can't find any manuals or wiring diagrams.

The connector for the controller is common to the normal mortal Eber MII 10. One way to deal with this would be to simply buy the wiring harness, hook it up, and try it. I have no idea whether a normal timer/diagnostic controller will work with it, or not. If I buy all that stuff and it doesn't work, I won't be able to use it with the newer ones which have a different control algorithm.

Has anyone attempted to adapt any of these truck heaters, to boat use? Anyone have any words of wisdom or guidance?

 

[jiris]

I have a complete factory documentation. please, send me your email. The PDF files are to big for this forum.

 

[pcatterall]

Cant help on this one but worth noting that there are many Airtronic heaters advertised on ebay which will only work in their specific make of vehicle because the ECUs are vehicle specific and wont work properly 'outside' that vehicle Merc MAN and Iveco being among them.

 

[Dockhead]

I have a complete factory documentation. please, send me your email. The PDF files are to big for this forum.

Wow, thanks very much!

 

[Dockhead]

Cant help on this one but worth noting that there are many Airtronic heaters advertised on ebay which will only work in their specific make of vehicle because the ECUs are vehicle specific and wont work properly 'outside' that vehicle Merc MAN and Iveco being among them.

Yes, I've heard this, but this one is a Hydronic and has a normal Eberspacher connector. I will read the documentation from Jiris and see if the pin outs are common. If so, then it might work.

 

[Dockhead]

In case anyone is interested -- and surely there are other frustrated and curious Eber owners on here --

The MII version of the large hydronic heaters is quite different from the old Hydronic 10.

It breaks down into fewer parts, so even more, now, the repair these mostly you just toss out a struggling component and replace with a new one.

The ECU is supposed to be much less fragile than the old one.

But it is now integral with the blower, so you have to replace the whole shebang if something goes wrong. And the ECU/blower unit costs nearly £500, more than half the cost of an entire new heater unit (without installation kit).

So one probably sure fire approach to making my Iveco unit work would be to replace the ECU/blower unit with the standard type, but the cost of doing that almost defeats the purpose.

It looks like if no one has experience making one of these work, I'm going to have to just buy a whole new unit, and hope that this one will work plugged into the standard wiring harness. If not, then it means the ECU/Blower unit is not compatible with the normal ones, and I will need to either toss the whole unit, or maybe take it apart and sell it for parts.

 

[pagoda]

In case anyone is interested -- and surely there are other frustrated and curious Eber owners on here --

The MII version of the large hydronic heaters is quite different from the old Hydronic 10.

It breaks down into fewer parts, so even more, now, the repair these mostly you just toss out a struggling component and replace with a new one.

The ECU is supposed to be much less fragile than the old one.

But it is now integral with the blower, so you have to replace the whole shebang if something goes wrong. And the ECU/blower unit costs nearly £500, more than half the cost of an entire new heater unit (without installation kit).

So one probably sure fire approach to making my Iveco unit work would be to replace the ECU/blower unit with the standard type, but the cost of doing that almost defeats the purpose.

It looks like if no one has experience making one of these work, I'm going to have to just buy a whole new unit, and hope that this one will work plugged into the standard wiring harness. If not, then it means the ECU/Blower unit is not compatible with the normal ones, and I will need to either toss the whole unit, or maybe take it apart and sell it for parts.

I had a similar nasty Webasto experience. The temptation to buy perhaps 3 complete Chinese clones for the cost of one repair was strong. I found a supplier in the Czech Republic
http://www.prokes-auto.cz/ with more sensible costs, so meantime I have gone for a new blower fan / motor. If I have another failure down the line, I'm certainly going cheapo......

 

[Dockhead]

I hope this is interesting for anyone.

I have had a small breakthrough --

In the manual for the Hydronic M-II, there is this guide to connecting an M-II to the older wiring harness:



So now I know what every pin on the standard M-II does and I can fairly easily check that on the Iveco unit I have to see if it's the same, which I'm quite sure it will be.

So now the only question is whether the ECU requires some signal which the standard controller doesn't give, but I'm thinking that this is really unlikely since the controller gets a signal from a single wire to turn itself on or off -- what else could it want?

Plus I won't even have to buy the wiring harness -- all I need is the plug. So I guess I'm going to try this.

I hope this will be helpful for someone else.

 

[Dockhead]

Still don't know if this is interesting for anyone, but I will continue with the story in case it might help someone.

I now have it on good information that the Iveco version of the Eberspacher Hydronic M-II has an OEM ECU which requires a CAN-bus signal to operate -- this despite the fact that the plug is the same.

This can be cured with a new ECU/blower but the cost is 50% of a new unit, so doesn't seem worthwhile. I guess this one is doomed to be broken for parts.

I have found an allegedly recently serviced Hydronic 10 for sale for a reasonable price (1/2 the cost of the ECU for the Iveco). It even includes the diagnostic timer. This would be a painless way to get heat working again, because it will plug straight into my existing wiring harness. Then I will have three of these so abundant spare parts, including one with a new burner tube.

Seems like a good and economical solution. But I wonder if it wouldn't really be better to bite the bullet and chuck out all this old junk and simply buy a new M-II? The old Hydronic 10 has this awful unreliable ECU which is no longer officially supported or sold, and I don't know whether I can find an electronics shop which can fix them. Kruegers told me that the M-II is far more reliable. I don't entirely trust them, but if you look at the old ECU it does indeed look like something stolen off a sputnik from the early Cold War period -- I can well imagine that the M-II really is more reliable.

I'd love to hear from anyone who has used both and has a view on this.

 

[pagoda]

Still don't know if this is interesting for anyone, but I will continue with the story in case it might help someone.

I now have it on good information that the Iveco version of the Eberspacher Hydronic M-II has an OEM ECU which requires a CAN-bus signal to operate -- this despite the fact that the plug is the same.

This can be cured with a new ECU/blower but the cost is 50% of a new unit, so doesn't seem worthwhile. I guess this one is doomed to be broken for parts.

I have found an allegedly recently serviced Hydronic 10 for sale for a reasonable price (1/2 the cost of the ECU for the Iveco). It even includes the diagnostic timer. This would be a painless way to get heat working again, because it will plug straight into my existing wiring harness. Then I will have three of these so abundant spare parts, including one with a new burner tube.

Seems like a good and economical solution. But I wonder if it wouldn't really be better to bite the bullet and chuck out all this old junk and simply buy a new M-II? The old Hydronic 10 has this awful unreliable ECU which is no longer officially supported or sold, and I don't know whether I can find an electronics shop which can fix them. Kruegers told me that the M-II is far more reliable. I don't entirely trust them, but if you look at the old ECU it does indeed look like something stolen off a sputnik from the early Cold War period -- I can well imagine that the M-II really is more reliable.

I'd love to hear from anyone who has used both and has a view on this.

Most vaguely current Eber/Webasto heaters fitted in road vehicles are integrated with the vehicle electronics- so rely on manufacturer specific CAN control signals to work. The days of unplugging a heater and transplanting it to a boat are unfortunately on the way out. Once NMEA2000 catches up something might be possible? Or even less possible? All this suits Eber/Webasto as they can sell more gear at higher prices for marine users.
I like stuff that operates stand alone- with fuses, switches and perhaps relays. Nothing more clever unless I can avoid it.

 

[Dockhead]

Most vaguely current Eber/Webasto heaters fitted in road vehicles are integrated with the vehicle electronics- so rely on manufacturer specific CAN control signals to work. The days of unplugging a heater and transplanting it to a boat are unfortunately on the way out. Once NMEA2000 catches up something might be possible? Or even less possible? All this suits Eber/Webasto as they can sell more gear at higher prices for marine users.
I like stuff that operates stand alone- with fuses, switches and perhaps relays. Nothing more clever unless I can avoid it.

Would be great is someone would reverse engineer it. I would think it would not be that complicated.

 

[ghostlymoron]

I think the Russians and Chinese have already done it. I had a eberspacher for four years and when it was working, it was fabulous but I had two expensive breakdowns in that time which cost a couple of hundred each time. I've defended them in the past but really they don't seem the most reliable but of kit. I like the look of drip feed heaters but there are problems like the removable flue and the danger of asphyxiation.

Would be great is someone would reverse engineer it. I would think it would not be that complicated.