{"id":25206,"date":"2024-01-31T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-31T08:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=25206"},"modified":"2024-01-30T07:46:14","modified_gmt":"2024-01-30T15:46:14","slug":"exnotes-long-term-test-vevor-diesel-heater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2024\/01\/31\/exnotes-long-term-test-vevor-diesel-heater\/","title":{"rendered":"ExNotes Long Term Test: Vevor Diesel Heater"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Joe Gresh\u00a0<\/strong><\/h6>\n

Towards the end of last year\u2019s heating season the Vevor 12-volt, 5kw diesel heater started shutting down and giving an error code. The big blue, start\/stop button on the front of the machine blinks the code number between pauses. I counted an error No. 8, which the owner\u2019s manual said was a problem with the temperature sensor. This was a little disappointing because I had only run 10 gallons of diesel through the heater. (It runs a long time on a gallon, like 8 hours) I didn\u2019t mess with it at the time as it was warming up and I was busy doing other vital, yet unimportant tasks.<\/p>\n

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Fast-forward to winter, 2024 and it\u2019s cold again so I figured I\u2019d better fix the heater. I looked up a new temperature sensor for $4 on Amazon and after waiting a few weeks the thing came all the way from China. Installing the new temperature sensor changed nothing. The heater kept shutting down with an error code No. 8.<\/p>\n

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Utube Academy provided some more ideas, one of which was the fuel pump was not functioning good enough to keep the fire going.\u00a0 I bought a new fuel pump on Amazon for $18 and installed it. After bleeding the air out of the pump the heater turned on for a few minutes and then shut down showing error code No. 8 again.<\/p>\n

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Another Utube suggestion was that the glow plug was bad, failing to ignite the diesel fuel. While looking up the glow plug @ $19 I found a complete new heater for $90 with free delivery. I stuck the new heater in the shopping cart and it showed up a few days later.<\/p>\n

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The new heater was almost an exact duplicate of the Vevor unit and in fact it had a more advanced keypad display instead of a blue button. The replacement unit swapped out easily and in no time I had heat in the shed.<\/p>\n

A few more weeks passed and the new glow plug showed up. Taking the unit apart to gain access to the plug was easy and I pulled the wires off of the glow plug so I could put a socket on the thing. That wasn\u2019t a good idea. Turns out the wires are non-removable and you need a special 12mm slotted deep socket to unscrew the plug. When I pulled the wires off I actually broke the glow plug ceramic. The special socket for the plug was helpfully included in the box with the new glow plug. Unfortunately, I didn\u2019t realize this before destroying the old glow plug. That\u2019s just how I roll.<\/p>\n

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None of this mattered because once I started taking the heater apart I noticed the exhaust port was almost plugged with diesel soot.<\/p>\n

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It was so clogged I had to take the fuel feed pipe and the combustion chamber apart to clean out all the soot.<\/p>\n

The gaskets tore when I dismantled the fuel feed and the combustion chamber so I had to order new gaskets from Amazon @$16. If you\u2019re keeping count I now had almost as much in parts as a heater costs.<\/p>\n

These Chinese diesel heaters are pretty simple to work on and after cleaning the combustion chamber and exhaust pipe it was only a few minutes to put the whole thing back together. I rigged it up for a test run and the heater put out plenty of hot air and ran for as long as I wanted to hear it run. It seems to be fixed but I don\u2019t understand why it sooted up so soon. Maybe there was another issue that I have inadvertently fixed while swapping out parts? Maybe not. Keep clicking on ExhaustNotes and I\u2019ll report on this situation as it develops.<\/p>\n

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