Chilli, The funky green chillin' machine!

That’s a bit posh! Colorado? My friend has 2, he uses one and keeps the other stashed away. Boringly reliable I guess!!

 

Ok, so the eberspacher is being a git! I connected power and fuel and turned the switch. Both fans run but the fuel pump doesn’t. There is 12v at the pump but it seems the switched ground through the combustion fan isn’t happening. It all worked perfectly fine on the bench but now it’s all fitted up under the van it’s not! I’ll have to remove the combustion fan and strip it down to check the fuel pump points.

 

So in between bench testing the heater the points controlling the fuel pump have gone south. Rather than strip the combustion fan down to get at the points I replaced it with another unit. Amazingly the replacement unit was bad too! Another rummage in the eberspacher spares pile turns up a third combustion fan that seems to be ok and gets the fuel pump running and finally the heater fires up and we have heat! Yay!

 

After getting the heater sorted another disaster is averted when I spot a small nut and washer on the cab floor. It turns out to be from the Butty’s bits accelerator linkage. It was hanging on literally by a thread! All sorted

 

As I had retro fitted fitted the eberspacher BA6 into our camper, the heating ducting was a bit different from a van that came with the heater from the factory. The recirculating inlet into the booster fan was difficult to source so I used the duct that should be used for hot air under the rock and roll bed. Unfortunately the fan inlet is a lot larger than the heater duct.




I found a rubber reducer from a pond pump supplier that, when trimmed down kinda fits…

 

Here it is trimmed and fitted in place

 

Then it was time to fit the belly pan…

 

Mine won’t run unless you have the red slider on the dash in the max heat (lowest) position, must be something electrical connected with that switch position that affects power to the eber.
I guess it’s logical, you only put the eber on when you already have the heating set to hot

 

Yes mine is the same but it also works with the slider in any position when the ignition is off. Not sure if they are meant to be like that but I’ve wired it from the leisure battery.

 

RTTS here we come!!!

 

see you there

 

Safe journey buddy!

 

RTTS ‘23

Wow! What a journey 540 miles!
So we left Pembrokeshire Friday lunchtime after meeting up with friends from Pembs Aircooled club. Our bunch of cars included 3 Karmann ghia’s, a split panel van, 3 beetles, a T5, a T6.1 and 3 bay campers. We travelled in convoy to a campsite near Bristol for an overnight stop. Then it was up at the crack of dawn to get to the Gordano services on the M5 to meet-up with the RTTS convoy for the cruise down to Newquay. The cruise was great fun and I think we entertained the bank holiday traffic. Lovely to travel old school style with plenty of stops at the services where we ate food and chatted with other veedubbers.

The revived show was really good with none of the chavvy SRi Novas or MAX power brigade. It was just an old school VW & hot rod meet with some music too. As it was only a 2 dayish event we camped on the Sunday night at the Bedruthian steps campsite just up the road before finally heading home on the Monday.

Chilli behaved himself but there were a couple of scary moments when he shuddered and spluttered so I will have to investigate what is amiss. As the engine only has about 250 miles under its belt I took it steady and kept to 50mph on the way down. On the return journey he seemed happy at 60 and even seen the odd 70mph.
Mpg seems to be about 24.5 which I’m happy with.
Oil temp on the motorway seemed to stay just below 220F on the gauge.

Leaving West Wales.


Aircooled pembs club cars on Fistral. (I couldn’t get under the barrier with the portapotti on the roof and std suspension!)


Not a bay but I really liked this van


Awesome ghia at the cruise staring point



The kids had faces painted and haircuts!





Aircooled pembs group photo at the Bedruthian steps campsite.


Bedruthian steps


Slip streamin’!

 

Gordano services at the beginning of the cruise







my new sun canopy

 

West’est fest ‘23
We’ve just got back from West’est fest which is literally just down the road unlike last weeks 500+ mile trip to RTTS
We joined our local club Aircooled Pembs at the show and lined up together. And chilli won a trophy!! Yay!! Our club also won another trophy and also the best in show!!

 

Thanks buddy nice to get something for all the hard work!
Out of interest I see in your signature you have Koni’s and HD ARB, what’s your thoughts? Is it a mod worth doing?

 

Another pic from Westest fest. My mate Randall bought along his cool Vespa! My cabrio is in the background too

 

A little trip down to the beach at Amroth for a BBQ with Nat and the kids with mum too!