Sunster Diesel Heater Meanderings...

    Another 4 months fly by since the last entry here - time definitely is the enemy!

    Anyway, this is about a diesel heater I bought in January 2024 - so a relatively new acquisition - that has received practically no use, but is already giving me trouble.  I already had a Mikuni diesel heater on a boat I bought a few years back, which also had problems.  Turned out to be a relatively simple glow-plug issue, but being curious, I also dismantled it, to see what made it tick, and was surprised to find how clean its innards were - this will have a bearing on what's coming!

    This Sunster diesel heater was to remain a landlubber however, and destined for an old caravan that has seen better days.  I had tried the usual route, namely heating via the built-in gas heater, but this had proven both expensive & dangerous - a full 11.54 Kg gas canister had unceremoniously liberated its contents, in the space of a few days.  The leak, as it turned out, was a faux-pas on my part, a copper-pipe-to-fridge connector had gotten wrenched as I tried fixing other stuff.  I eventually fixed the leak, but not being a firm believer in my prowess as a plumber, I figured a diesel heater would be the safer option in the long run.

     In the year I've had the Sunster, I haven't gotten close to fitting it in the caravan.  The main reason was my reluctance to go cutting holes in it, complicated by the fact that exhaust & inlet holes really need to be on different sides, so Carbon monoxide wouldn't become an issue.  This required the purchase of more pipework from Aliexpress, the appropriate lengths of which proved surprisingly hard to source.  But source them I did, along with the inlet & exhaust ports that bolt to the caravan body, and connect the pipework to the heater.  Slow, but progress nonetheless.

    Until the heater stopped working!  I had been intermittently running it in the shed for the past year, to ascertain its running costs, having seen loads of Youtube videos celebrating how inexpensive they were - as far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on that one!   When I say the heater stopped working, what was happening was that the burner would apparently fire up OK, but it would then start producing loads of smoke, before it appeared to 'smother itself' - all the while, producing practically no heat.  It wasn't even throwing up an error code, instead just entering its powering-down mode, then switching off. 

    Opening the heater was surprisingly easy.  When I opened the boat-heater, the halves seemed 'stuck' together, as if in addition to a gasket, they had used some kind of gasket sealant as well.  It was so well held together, that the gasket came off in two halves!  This caused me no end of problems.  Finding gaskets/Glow plugs etc. for The Sunster, or any other Chinese Eberspacher copy is a doddle, and dead cheap into the bargain.  Finding stuff for the Mikuni, not so much!  So, I slapped the boat-heater together, broken gasket and all, and hoped for the best.  It turned out bad.  After 15-30 minutes with the heater running, it became apparent that clouds of carbon deposits were wafting throughout the boat!  Rather than run for the hills to buy a new gasket, I instead abandoned ship, leaving the heater to run for 12-15 hours on its lonesome.  I figured that the gunk being given off, would self-seal the cracked gasket, and lo & behold, it did!!!  But, back to the present.

      The Sunster heater, once opened, was a sight to behold - as can be seen in the pics.  All of this build-up, in less than a year and after having used, at most, 25 liters of tractor diesel - I was gob-smacked!  Youtube is full of people telling the world that they're burning every kind of crap, from used vegetable oil, to waste engine oil in their heaters, and it continues to run perfectly for years.  Whereas, here am I using exactly what is recommended, and not even getting a year's worth of heat out of it.  Not a happy Camper.

    The one plus was that it was dead simple to clean out.  That, and the fact that it then started up straight away, with barely any black smoke coming from the exhaust.  One thing that I had forgotten to clean was that wire mesh thingy that the glow plug fits in to.  The other thing I had forgotten about (and YT has just reminded me of!) was that you need to periodically run the heater flat out for a while, which will result in all the soot you see in the photos here, getting burned off of their own accord.

    I must remember that one!!!
 

Li-ion DC-DC Battery Technology.

    A year ago, maybe two, I was not aware that Li-ion AA-type batteries were even a thing.  The closest thing I had come across, involved a Gofundme or Kickstarter-sourced idea that had 'ordinary' batteries sitting in a barely non-existent holder, with an even smaller DC-DC circuit module, that generated a constant output voltage for the duration of the battery life.  Thing was, it didn't work anywhere near as well as the developer suggested, and the people that funded the venture, ended up losing hundreds of thousands as a result.  But it appears to have got people thinking, and possibly was the chicken that ended up laying the egg I'm referencing here. 

    Instead of dealing with 'ordinary' batteries, this new battery technology starts with high energy-dense Li-ion batteries.  Curious as to how they performed, I bought a handful of type AA's and a pair of PP3 type 9 volters.  The 4 AA's weren't cheap, costing €30, but that included the charger as well.  The PP3's were a more reasonable €6 each.

 

 

    Performance-wise, both types fared well, with each subjected to the same 100mA current draw.  The Liitokala brand, though fairly well regarded, claim a ludicrous 1100mAh capacity.  Their actual capacity is closer to 350mAh.  Instead of fibbing, Liitokala should instead have listed the battery capacity in Watt-hours (Wh), which provides a more accurate capacity measure where DC-DC supplied outputs are involved - in this instance, between 3.1 to 3.2Wh from my measurements.

    The Hixon AA batteries more sensibly use Wh for claimed-capacity from the get-go.  The battery manufacturer itself seems highly regarded, and my measurement results would tend to bear this out.  Rated at having 3500mWh capacities, all four AA batteries measured significantly higher in my testing, coming in between 4.3 and 4.4Wh.

    The main downside with this type of DC-DC battery is that you have no clue as to their remaining state of charge.  A secondary unexpected annoyance is that, in use, they supply power for appreciably less time than say, NiMH batteries.  This became evident over the Christmas period when I was using them to power Christmas lights.  The reason is obvious when you think about it.  Their constant voltage output means that they provide constant power for the duration of their charge - meaning, my x-mas lights maintain a constant brightness throughout - whereas Nimh battery voltage drops appreciably as they discharge, so lights glow less brightly, over time, but stay lit for a longer time.

    In summary, it's interesting tech, but not awe-inspiring.  Certain electrical appliances whose performance are effected by voltage fall-off while running, will benefit.  But generally, normal rechargeables will do just fine.  I won't be ordering more any time soon.

 

UT-210E Clamp Meter Repair...

     Another quick post, and a tip of the hat to the New Year.

    I'm sure I've raved about it already in a past post, namely, that I'm a huge fan of the UT-210E Clamp Meter.  I bought my 1st (of 3) around about 2015, well before the dirty little secret of how capable they were became common knowledge.  As a result, at the time, they were cheap - my first cost just €20 & change!!!  This is the meter pictured below, along with the original, broken LCD.

 

    This damage came about as a result of my throwing in disgust a DC power monitor that I had just bought, in the meter's general direction, when I discovered what a piece of shit it was.  Unfortunately, it came housed in a hefty anodised aluminium case, so was akin to whacking the meter with a hammer!

    On realising what had transpired, my second impulse was to toss the meter in the rubbish bin - I had already realised my first impulse - to take an actual hammer to the offending power monitor!  After a cooling-off period, I went scouring the internet for a replacement LCD, and after failing in that pursuit, I figured the only recourse left was to order a replacement UT-210E, this time priced €30-something.  The broken one I boxed for posterity.

    That was 5-6 years ago.  In the interim, I had purchased my third UT-210E, though at a much inflated price, in the region of €45-50.  More time passed, right up to about 2 months ago in fact, and while perusing the web, came across Sellers asking €62-€65 for the same meter, which got me wondering if anyone was now selling LCD's for a meter that was now costing 3 times what I had originally paid for it.  Lo And Behold, there was - UNI-T themselves, as it turned out - and for €20.48 to be precise - I jumped at the chance!!!

    

 

    Probably the most satisfying €20 I've ever spent - yeah, I like my UT-210E's.