Superfastracing 8KW 12V Knob Switch Air diesel Fuel Heater For Motor-home Truck Bus Car 8000W

Once I finally caved and decided to put in a CDH, I was very confused as to which one I should buy. It’s hard to go off the reviews because you never know how the reviewer installed it. They could have installed the intake directly hooked up to the exhaust for all I know, and written a review saying how bad the heater is. It also kinda seems like getting a good CDH is just the luck of the draw. I saw reviews where people showed photos of cracked aluminum heat exchangers (a big problem) all the way to people having no issues whatsoever. So my goal with this review is to put all of the knowledge I have into a review so you can make the best choice for your situation.I decided to go with a CDH because I didn’t want to shell out enough money to buy an apple laptop for a heater I wasn’t planning on using very often. My girlfriend and I prefer not to vanlife when it is below freezing; it’s not very pleasant. So a CDH for 10% of the price was a perfect option. One major upside to the CDH is that there is a massive online community of people using, maintaining, and fixing these, so any question you have will have an answer online. As a side note, if there was a Chinese propane heater, I probably would have gone with that since there is less of an exhaust smell with propane.The nice thing about the real deal webasto and espar heaters is that they have quality product support. You can email them and ask questions or call them up if you have issues. It seemed like every CDH on Amazon has little to zero product support. You get what you get and hope for the best. My plan was to install the heater and test it, and if it didn’t work properly I’d make sure I hadn’t made any installation mistakes and then return and try a different seller on Amazon. Luckily, I didn’t have to do that.When installing these CDHs, there are a lot of things to keep in mind. You NEED to do your research when installing these as you could break it easily or worse things could happen to your van/RV/shack. I will write what I did, but you should be researching elsewhere too. I used the faroutride articles a lot, consulted the espar installation instructions, and watched lots of different YouTube videos specifically from this Australian badass who made a whole video series. It is worth your time to watch all of his videos so you understand how the heater works, his username is “John McK 47”.I have a 2015 Diesel Ford Transit, so I luckily tapped into the fuel tank without having to install the one that comes with this heater. Ford makes a part that you can install in the tank with a straw that sucks fuel up and out. Some CDHs come with a metal straw that you can use to tap into your fuel tank, but if you don’t have a ford, research and see if there is a manufacturer specified method for tapping into the fuel tank. I know that the Dodge pro masters have fuel taps you can use. Their engineers get paid to design these things, and it will most likely be better to use their solution rather than dropping your fuel tank, drilling a hole in it, and gluing a metal straw in. This heater doesn’t even come with a metal straw anyway though.Some people buy a turret to help with installation, so you can drill one big hole in your van floor instead of a bunch of small holes. I think a turret is a great idea, but I didn’t want to shell out for it. Instead, I bought a 4” duct end cap from a hardware store and siliconed it into the 4” hole I drilled through our plywood subfloor and van floor. Then I just drilled all the necessary holes in the metal of the end cap. It worked really well.One major tip I saw all over the internet was to make sure you have the right fuel hose and hose clamps. You need to have the rigid white fuel line (this heater has the right stuff) and hose clamps that impart even pressure around the black rubber hose (this heater does NOT have the right hose clamps). I found a fuel line kit on Amazon that had the proper hose clamps.Another big tip was to get the exhaust line correct. It seems like this is where a lot of people’s problems come from. You need to follow several rules, such as: keeping a continuous downward slope so the moisture can escape the exhaust piping, not having too many bends in the pipe, keeping the total exhaust pipe length under 6 feet, orienting the muffler so that the weep hole is pointing down, and other rules that I probably am forgetting. These rules are all in the espar manual. Get the exhaust right, and you are most of the way to having a functioning CDH. The faroutride articles have really good information for the exhaust line.There are other smaller things to get right too. These include: orienting the fuel pump correctly, keeping the inlet far away from the exhaust, sealing the heater properly so that no exhaust gases get into your dwelling, using a filter on the inlet instead of the included muffler, priming the fuel line before startup, putting heat shield on the fuel line wherever it is close to the exhaust line, and more that I am probably forgetting.One personal tip for installing the black rubber hose over the fuel line is to first spray some WD40 into the black rubber hose. You don’t need much, just enough to coat the inside of the rubber hose. This makes it 100 times easier to push the white fuel hose into it. Without it, you will lose days off your lifespan being frustrated trying to get the fuel line all the way into the rubber. It’s infuriating. Use WD40 and live longer!Also, you can burn the manual that comes with this the moment you touch it. It is the most worthless collection of information you’ll come across.Now I’ll review this specific heater.I’ll start off by saying that so far, the heater has worked really well. The controller is hard to understand, but there are lots of videos on how to use it. When installing, I needed the cables for the pump and the controller to be longer, so I had to splice wires in. I was also confused as to why the positive power cable was SO LONG compared to the negative. It’s probably because they think you have a common chassis negative, but this wasn’t the case for me so I had to splice the main power cables too.I also had to buy more exhaust pipe because what was provided was not long enough.I installed the controller right next to my bed pillow, but I didn’t realize that even when the display is off it puts out a lot of light which does not help your sleep quality. Some people say you aren’t supposed to, but I ended up putting a switch on the heater power cables because the light was so bad. The heater has a shutdown procedure that keeps the it from overheating, so people recommend that you don’t put a switch because you might accidentally switch the switch instead of turning the heater off via the controller. It’s a risk I live with.When we run the heater for around 20 minutes or longer, it starts to smell kind of burnt and exhausty. This makes me worry that we have a crack in our heat exchanger, but if that were the case we would probably have some melted holes in the plastic housing of the heater, and we don’t have any right now. It could be a microscopic crack or something, but I don’t really know. It is a faint smell. I always run our heater on maximum temperature because it helps avoid soot and carbon buildup. Maybe if I didn’t run it on max it wouldn’t smell weird. This one definitely is 2kW, you can tell by the size since the 5kW ones are much larger. 5kW is overkill for our space and I wanted to be able to run the heater on max without making us sweat.Overall, a CDH is an adventure to install. But if you are up for the challenge, this heater is a good option. It seems like every seller on Amazon is selling the same thing anyway, just with different weird company names. I’m giving 5 stars because even with its quirks, you can’t beat the price. You just have to cross your fingers that you get a good one. Good luck!!

I bought the 8kw LCD. I got it running as soon as I got it installed. Worked great for about 2 cycles then threw error code. I took it apart and had to clean it which was absolutely filled with carbon. I reinstalled it and it worked again. I figured it was a fluke and would not do it again. So I bought another for a small cabin. I went on a ride and fired it up in my van it worked then shut off. So I just replaced the old heater with the new one and it ran once and code came up with error 3 which is the heater element. I checked it and it was barely screwed on. I tightened it and still code 3. I took the old one apart again and full of carbon. Now I'm down $400. Im gonna give the new one another chance and put new glow plug. Im about to rip it out and go back to my Heater Buddy. To many You Tube videos on how to fix which is a good indication they have many problems.

after reading reviews on the new control I decided to go with this old style heater control knob. has worked well for me. a few reviews mentioned a smell of the heater on first start up. I didn't experience this and I would suspect they never installed the exhaust fittings correctly. With that said you should always have a carbon monoxide alarm installed if your using something like this.The blower on this can get pretty loud. I suspect I can quiet it down with an enclosure since its currently out in the open in an ice shack.If your running kerosene or winter diesel in this you should be mixing 2 stroke oil (out board motor type) to keep the fuel pump oiled and it will last a long time.The negative wire is way to short, its assumed your going to mount to a vehicle chassis but you may have to made some changes here depending on your usage. another annoyance was getting the fuel tank barb installed. and its of questionable quality with the O ring setup. After drilling my hole and tossing the barb in it only took a few minutes of fiddling around with an O ring pick to finally get it aligned to drop down. hasn't leaked yet but time will tell.I had this heater running for a week straight to test it out with my carbon monoxide detector and to get an idea of fuel usage. It just chugged along with no issues and used less then 10gals of fuel during this 7 day test run with temps from 30's down to -9f and it just kept going.