Eberspacher debacle....

Nudge

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15 Apr 2009
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Had the boat for nearly 10 years - came with a DL5 fitted but it never fired up. Was always more interested in making the boat go quicker rather than the comforts. Did look at it a few years back and concluded that the fuel wasn't getting through and the pump looked dodgy so put in a new one and.... no response. So... moved on to other priorities.

Retirement time so as racing is mainly weekends, time to convert to cruising with the comforts. After visiting my mates boat in the hard in February, when he had teh heating on, decided to take action, He had removed his Eber and replaced with a Planar, (Pre Ukraine events) Within a week I had ordered, received and plumbed in the new system. Getting ready to flash it up, the startup instructions pointed out that the fuel lines needed to be primed and a kit was available from the supplier..etc.

Returned in the morning with a big syringe - went to suck fuel on the pick up pipe end - nothing, nada. Tried to push air down the pipe - nothing. Went home and back with the compressor. Wrestled that up the ladder but nothing doing to de-block the pick up pipe, Finally managed to get the pick up pipe out and sure enough the tip was rusty and blocked. Cut back and cleaned up, System primed and fired up perfectly.

Conclusion - I probably have a prefectly functional Eber that had a blocked pick up pipe!! However I do now have a fuctional, reliable system on the boat!

Will bench test the Eber to see if I can make it work.
 

LittleSister

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Wasn't planar Russian? If so, new unit plus all spares possibly a problem at present.

A forumite who is also a dealer/installer of Planar (now actually branded 'Autoterm') heaters posted recently to assure that there is about a year's worth of spares stock etc. already in the country, so there presumably won't be an immediate problem in that regard.

I think he also said there were pre-sanctions plans for the heaters to be made in future in Latvia (or was it Lithuania?), but who knows whether sanctions (or customer preferences) will continue and scupper that.
 
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NormanS

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10 Nov 2008
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My Eber works perfectly. It gets a lot of use. It's installed properly and runs on kerosene. If I was ever thinking of replacing it, I would buy two Chinese ones.
 
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