Squiffy
Forum Member
A couple of weeks ago I fitted a new Chinese diesel heater to my Sons T5, it worked well for two days and then stopped with an error code of E06 which means a problem with the fan/motor, usually this means the fan is hitting the casing and causing the fan to jam but on inspection there was no obvious problem with alignment, so I tested the fan power wires with a multimeter and found an open cct.
I purchased it from Amazon marketplace from a firm Prijesse so I immediately contacted the seller and informed them of what happened, to give them full marks for service, after they suggested to remove the inspection cover as the fan might be jammed and I informed them that was the first thing I tried and that electrical testing proved that the fan had an internal fault, they without quibble or asking for the bad unit to be returned, sent me a complete new system with all the trimmings.
This was installed and works beautifully and is exceptionally quiet too.
Ok so now I had a choice for the broken heater, new fan unit from Ebay ( circa £16 ) or try and strip down the fan unit and see if it can be repaired.
I went for the strip down as I'm always interested in how things work.
The initial work was remove the body from the outer casing which entails levering off the rear section and then removing the front casing from the heater block, then the mother board by single screw and squeeze together a clip , making sure you photo or atleast remember which plug go where on the motherboard.
Next is the 4 allen key bolts that hold the fan unit to the combustion block, if your unlucky the gasket can break on pulling the fan unit from the rest of the block, luckily I had a spare gasket from when I'd previously bought a heater plug kit, but it would be a comparatively easy job to make a gasket up or use heatproof gasket goo as this gasket only stops air leaking and not combustion gases.
Setting the combustion chamber to one side you are left with the fan unit. I used a two leg puller to pull off the main fan from the front spindle but judicious levering would get the front fan off quite easily. The rear fan is once again push fit onto the rear spindle again with this I slipped two table knives between the fan and base and levered it carefully off the spindle.
There are three set screws that hold the motor to the base which are hidden behind the rear fan so until the rear fan is removed you can not get at them.
Once the motor is removed your left with a motor that has two spindles front and rear. The front plate of the motor is held in place by the usual 4 crimped edges, for these I used a pair off small side snips to open up the crimps so that again a judicious tap with a small hammer on the rear spindle knocked out the front plate and allowed complete removal of the rotor and brush housing.
What I found then was that one of the brushes had come out of its housing and wedged sideways between the brush housing and the commutator and the subsequent heat had melted the brush housing, Hmmmm suspect that this had happened at the factory as there is no way the brush could have come out of the housing like it had if they had been assembled correctly. I removed the brush which was beyond help and cleaned up the brush housing with a needle file, the housing was extensively damaged but with tiny bits of credit card and superglue I managed to repair the brush housing. Luckily I have quite a few carbon brushes of various sizes and managed to find one of the exact size with a copper wire leader ( In the past I have cut an over sized brush down to a much smaller size from a far larger brush using emery cloth ) so I soldered the wire to the old copper wire and put the brush back in the brush housing folled by the spring which pushes the brush against the commutator. With the brushes in place on the commutator the motor was reassembled and the front face plate clipped back in place. The complete motor was then reinstalled to the fan base by the three set screws at this stage I tested the continuity of the power leads from the motor and all showed as good the whole fan unit was then put back together in reverse order making sure not to push the fans on too far so they bind and far enough so the front fan doesn't hit the outer casing. One thing I forgot to mention is once the front fan is off, under it is a pushed on plastic cross with the squeeze fitting for the mother board, remember to put that back on so the squeeze clip fitting is up and in the right place.
With the heater put back together it was connected up to a spare battery and the fuel tank with diesel screwed to the shed wall I pressed the start on the monitor, the fan started turning, after about 30 seconds the heater plug came on the pump ticked a few times the fan started turning faster the pump started ticking quicker and off she went, really quiet one of the quietest I've heard and has been keeping my workshop comfy hot for almost two weeks now working constantly all day.
I have had to put the battery on a charger once for 4 or 5 hours in that time as it stopped working because after 5 days it went down to 9v giving a code P9 but once I connected the charger up off it went again and hasn't stopped.
I think the point of this is it is possible to fix one of these Chinese diesel heaters but for £16 it's probably easier to buy a new fan unit. So there you go a 5kw heater for free, but I can not fault the company for their customer service. Phil
I purchased it from Amazon marketplace from a firm Prijesse so I immediately contacted the seller and informed them of what happened, to give them full marks for service, after they suggested to remove the inspection cover as the fan might be jammed and I informed them that was the first thing I tried and that electrical testing proved that the fan had an internal fault, they without quibble or asking for the bad unit to be returned, sent me a complete new system with all the trimmings.
This was installed and works beautifully and is exceptionally quiet too.
Ok so now I had a choice for the broken heater, new fan unit from Ebay ( circa £16 ) or try and strip down the fan unit and see if it can be repaired.
I went for the strip down as I'm always interested in how things work.
The initial work was remove the body from the outer casing which entails levering off the rear section and then removing the front casing from the heater block, then the mother board by single screw and squeeze together a clip , making sure you photo or atleast remember which plug go where on the motherboard.
Next is the 4 allen key bolts that hold the fan unit to the combustion block, if your unlucky the gasket can break on pulling the fan unit from the rest of the block, luckily I had a spare gasket from when I'd previously bought a heater plug kit, but it would be a comparatively easy job to make a gasket up or use heatproof gasket goo as this gasket only stops air leaking and not combustion gases.
Setting the combustion chamber to one side you are left with the fan unit. I used a two leg puller to pull off the main fan from the front spindle but judicious levering would get the front fan off quite easily. The rear fan is once again push fit onto the rear spindle again with this I slipped two table knives between the fan and base and levered it carefully off the spindle.
There are three set screws that hold the motor to the base which are hidden behind the rear fan so until the rear fan is removed you can not get at them.
Once the motor is removed your left with a motor that has two spindles front and rear. The front plate of the motor is held in place by the usual 4 crimped edges, for these I used a pair off small side snips to open up the crimps so that again a judicious tap with a small hammer on the rear spindle knocked out the front plate and allowed complete removal of the rotor and brush housing.
What I found then was that one of the brushes had come out of its housing and wedged sideways between the brush housing and the commutator and the subsequent heat had melted the brush housing, Hmmmm suspect that this had happened at the factory as there is no way the brush could have come out of the housing like it had if they had been assembled correctly. I removed the brush which was beyond help and cleaned up the brush housing with a needle file, the housing was extensively damaged but with tiny bits of credit card and superglue I managed to repair the brush housing. Luckily I have quite a few carbon brushes of various sizes and managed to find one of the exact size with a copper wire leader ( In the past I have cut an over sized brush down to a much smaller size from a far larger brush using emery cloth ) so I soldered the wire to the old copper wire and put the brush back in the brush housing folled by the spring which pushes the brush against the commutator. With the brushes in place on the commutator the motor was reassembled and the front face plate clipped back in place. The complete motor was then reinstalled to the fan base by the three set screws at this stage I tested the continuity of the power leads from the motor and all showed as good the whole fan unit was then put back together in reverse order making sure not to push the fans on too far so they bind and far enough so the front fan doesn't hit the outer casing. One thing I forgot to mention is once the front fan is off, under it is a pushed on plastic cross with the squeeze fitting for the mother board, remember to put that back on so the squeeze clip fitting is up and in the right place.
With the heater put back together it was connected up to a spare battery and the fuel tank with diesel screwed to the shed wall I pressed the start on the monitor, the fan started turning, after about 30 seconds the heater plug came on the pump ticked a few times the fan started turning faster the pump started ticking quicker and off she went, really quiet one of the quietest I've heard and has been keeping my workshop comfy hot for almost two weeks now working constantly all day.
I have had to put the battery on a charger once for 4 or 5 hours in that time as it stopped working because after 5 days it went down to 9v giving a code P9 but once I connected the charger up off it went again and hasn't stopped.
I think the point of this is it is possible to fix one of these Chinese diesel heaters but for £16 it's probably easier to buy a new fan unit. So there you go a 5kw heater for free, but I can not fault the company for their customer service. Phil
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