Why do Eberspacher glow plugs fail?

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I've been wondering why people so often report failures of Eberspachers to be due to faulty glow plugs (or flame failure devices).

The glow plug is, presumably, just a coil of NiCr wire? That should last for thousands of hours continuous energisation, surely? Since it only glows for a minute or two on start-up, why do they ever fail??

Could it be that people normally try to start Eberspachers with their engines running, when the volts are up to 14V+? The life of a heating element could be drastically shortened by over-volting (power = V**2/R). If so, it would be best to start the Eberspacher without the engine running and with any mains charger off.

Or is there some other explanation?
 
Well, I can't speak from experience of glow-plug failure, or any other kind. I installed my D3L something like 10 years ago. I took the fuel supply from downstream of the fuel primary filter, contrary to Eberspacher's manual advice, but otherwise everything by the book. One interesting fact is that it has never had red diesel through it.

For its first five years it was used every weekend of the winter and many in the summer. As we have cruised south it has been used less and less and last summer in Greece was used twice, from memory. It has rarely been started other than when the batteries were mains charging. I have never had a moment's trouble with it, despite the fact that it has received no maintenance whatsoever; I have yet to disturb the unit at all.

So answering your question with another: are these maintenance-induced failures? or does the diesel quality have something to do with it?
 
Thanks. I don't understand what you mean by "The most common fault now (Around 7%) are now failing due to faults in the main control unit (Airtronic). " If you mean that of the 100+ you have had returned for repair, 7% had failed due to the controller, then that seems like a very small number.
 
I have a D4L for more than 25 years now. Most failures are due to dirty glow plugs and dirty combustion chambers, so they should be cleaned at least every two years! It is imperatif that you have minimum 12V and 20 Amp for starting so engine running or shore power is absolutely needed!!
 
P
same experience with me, very rare to see a gow plug failure, but it is worrying to see the highly expensive control units going tits up at £280ish a pop! have got one now in the workshop, cant get it to do owt, even the reader cant talk to it, owes me £120 if anyone wants it, tick tick pump, stainless pipes, NO TIMER, loom, some fuel pipe and some ducting.
S
 
L
see my other post, 7% at mid £200 is expensive!!it looks like the airtronics are showing a worrying trend to cook their internal ECUs.
S
 
When you say they should be cleaned every two years, roughly how many hours use do you mean by that?
 
Just to Clarify the 7%
I buy eberspachers from ex bt and other vehicles, of the last 100 D2s I have bought around 7 have not worked due to the internal control unit. One failed due to the flame/heat sensor and 2 needed the fan adjusting to clear the body of the heater.
In fairness many of these heaters have had little use but are 4/6 years old, if they had had harder use then perhaps other faults would manifestate themselves!
 
P
I do the same, am finding out that I am seeing the same percentage wise. Luckily it happens to me when I test them before putting them up for sale.
S
 
I'm hoping that by using my Erb D2 a lot that these fault's won't present themselves. I read somewhere that faults generally occour from lack of use rather than lots of use.

At the moment (winter, boat out of the water) it run's on full blast for 2 hours, once a week

During the summer it gets about 3 hours use a week
 
L
for what its worth, I hada D1LC on my 351 for nearly six years, (thanks to Charles Reed for it) I ran it when it was cold, I ran it non stop for 2 days once, I never touched it, i also had some D1lcs off BT vans that were smoky, I would take out the glo plug screen and clean the coke and varnish off it or replace it if it was burned ragged on the edges. On the D2s airtronics i havent had problems with coking or screens, only dead ECUs.
S
 
S
Yes I have around 4 at this time, complete and working except for the duff control unit. You can only cannabalise so many units!!
I suppose that the whole unit ( having had little use) has value in the boating world as a swap for a heavily coked up item
 
Am plucking up the courage to open this one, I notice that they click and presume that there is a relay in there, would be interesting to figure out if they are repairable.
Stu
 
on a d7l when used with the room thermostat, we needed a new glow plug every season with perhaps 150 running hours per plug.

then we went to fewer starts by running flat out on low heat. glow plugs now last 3 seasons +

every one has failed by becoming coil bound (element became closely compressed)& burning out.
 
You might be able to answer this question for me...When my D5 is running sometimes I can hear a low-frequency rumble, or roar, reminiscent of a garden flame-thrower. On start-up there is a loud rumble/roar which dies off. There is no smoke and no fumes.

Also, from new (to us) the D5 burps every five or ten minutes (I haven't timed it). It's as though someone has turned the power off at the fuse; the motor drops in tone and then instantly picks back up again. It doesn't seem to affect the operation in any way. Is that a fault?

I am presently running mine for up to 18 hours a day (actually firing) and we are depending on it for heating this winter, so I don't want much downtime....if it goes down I want to know that I can work on it quickly and effectively with no delays. Should I keep any spares to hand?
 
D
a wild arsed guess, its cycling, the flame thrower noise is the burner on full chat, the dip in noise is it dropping the revs to cycle even less heat. When I have them on the bench, I put them throught he various settings, have only worked on D1s and D2s, they cycle the burner AND the revs at different times. I am sure you know www.espar.com for the manual, in them is usually a diag of the cycles that the thing does, like a "timeline" almost, gives a good idea of what it does as it goes through the motions.
S
 
The flame-thrower noise is move apparent on low heat (1kW) and sometimes on medium (2kW) - on full power (5kW) it isn't audible. The 'burping' is very short -- a bit like a 'burp', really /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif You almost expect it to pardon itself afterwards. It can't be a pause in the flame, as on full power the tic pump has ticked two or three times during the burp, it seems to be just the fan(s). Very odd, but it has always done that and it doesn't sound problematic.
 
I have some observations to share. We are running the D5 for up to 18 hours a day. Mostly on the 1kW or 2kW output (under thermostatic control). Typically, we start the heater and it fires up to full output 5.5kW for a few minutes then falls back to 5kW (a standard fixed time). After a while the thermostat cuts the output back to 1kW and it runs like that for hours on end...even overnight on a very cold night. This is when I can start to hear the 'roaring' 'flamethrower' sort of noise from the unit. The other day, it also started to make popping noises from the exhaust -- no smoke or fumes, just popping noises. I then turned up the thermostat to force it to run at 5kW. There was quite a lot of popping - one every ten seconds or so - and gradually the popping died away and after 30 mins it was running perfectly again. On reducing back to 1kW the roaring had gone, as well.

It seems to me that my D5 carbons up after running at lower outputs for hours and that half an hours running at full power burns off that carbon. Since I can't see what is going on inside I don't know whether in time all the carbon would burn off or whether carbon is gradually accumulating. The good news is that running at full power would seem to reverse the build up.
 
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