Bed Outlet Removal for Diesel Heater

Right! Definitely thought about it, but with 2 day shipping it'd only be necessary on a trip and space is too limited to bring a spare

 

Yes after browsing that I figured you’ve done some research on them. Bench testing is a great idea. After reading some Amazon reviews where some started smoking all of a sudden and filling up a camper definitely would have a smoke alarm or not run it at night.

 

Yeah between Chinese quality control, and the amount of DIYers who shouldn't be DIYing, there's definitely some horror stories out there. Mine is still probably going to function more as a glove/boot drier than a night heater though.

 

Why not do what the 4Runners used to do for rear heat and run small hard lines of the cooling system to the back with a small heater core and 12v fan?

Sorry this might be a something too cold climate that I'm too Florida to understand.

 

@Key-Rei yeah probably wouldn't be warm enough for -30° nights at 9,000+ft in the mountains. I have hooked up 3" ducting to the center vents and ran A/C back to the bed/canopy for my dog though, he loved it haha. Is that sort of what you're talking about? Just tapping into the existing heater?

 

Nah the 3rd gen 4runnners in the very least had a "rear heater unit" mounted under the passenger seat that was basically it's own heater core plumbed into the trucks cooling system, T connections just before the firewall after the HVAC heat circuit valve so if you turned the heat on in the truck the rear passengers could flip a switch which turned on a fan and allowed 185° hot coolant to flow through it's own heater core.

I disconnected the rear heater and removed it to give myself a little more space under the seat and to remove a potential leak vector since Florida you only need heat for like 3 weeks a year. Also because it would still get a little warm from radiant heat making the passenger butt sweat a little more.

Another great thing the 3rd gen 4Runner had that I've never seen anywhere else is was a A/C "ball vent" under the steering column.

But if you're camping I suppose you wouldn't want to run the truck all night just for heat.

-30° F you're F-ING insane...

Coldest I ever camped in the truck was -7°F and buck a fucket full of that.

 

DO NOT TRUST THESE!!!!!!
I had an 8kw one I set up to heat my tepui (yea way overkill I shoulda got the 3kw one), but after setting it up and test using it a few times it started to make a weird smell and I was a little nervous and got my CO alarm from my house and wouldn’t ya know, the heater set it off almost immediately. My girlfriends coworker had one as well in his sketchy old van when he was camping and started to feel super nauseous and ended up at the hospital with carbon monoxide poisoning, lucky he’s alive. A guy I ride bikes with has the legit webasto one and never had an issue. If I were you I would NOT TRUST THAT, if you do want to risk it PLEASEEEE always always keep a carbon monoxide detector with you, camping isn’t fun if you end up dead.

 

OH cool that would be sweet, probably easier than carrying around a diesel tank and worrying about fumes. Might have to try something like that after my warranty is up.

-7° is no joke for sure! I'm guessing you weren't in Florida? Coldest I've been is -21° but it was only about -9° in my buddies van, and I was BUNDLED like 0° bag inside a 15° bag and bunch of layers. Only thing not covered was my nostrils lol. Only way I'm sticking around in -30° weather is if it's dumping FEET of snow

 

Oh shit good words of caution, definitely going to take some time for me to trust this thing now. I was planning on putting a CO detector as close to the sleeping platform as possible, but maybe 2 of them now, damn. Most days it's just going to be used to dry gear though. Very rarely will I run it through the night, and thanks to you not without paranoia. Definitely don't want to die, but idk spending 2 grand on a little heater might kill me too. Chest pains just thinking that

 

Having a small diesel heater running overnight uses like a gallon of fuel, running your truck all night uses like a tank of fuel. No sense in running the whole truck when your just trying to warm a small area overnight.

But, I had these things in my old diesel motorhome. They worked great and I didnt have to make the whole camper vibrate from the big diesel engine running.

 

https://www.propexheatsource.com/heaters/hs2000-furnace/

Pricey but seems worth it by not having to haul around diesel fuel.

 

ha yea don’t mean to be *that guy* hating on everything and being over dramatic, as I have also seen quite a few people, all on the internet, use them with success and have no issue, just seems to be the typical hit-or-miss cheap Chinese quality control issues. Also, on my set up I realized how easy it was to accidentally put the exhaust too close to the fresh air intake and get the CO in that way, which could have been what happened to the person I knew who got CO poisoning, but on mine I pulled it apart and the issue was a really poor quality gasket in the constant burn chamber and it was leaking a little but of frail and exhaust into the heated air chamber, but still goes to show the quality control may not always be there... for the record I tried replacing that gasket with some high quality high temp gasket maker and the weird smells went away and it didn’t trip the CO monitor but I still didn’t have enough confidence in it to trust it (my plan was to run it overnight, if you were just running it to preheat your area while you were awake with a working CO monitor I would feel waaaaaaaay more comfortable with it)

 

You'll want a 2kw for the truck, the 5kw is overkill for the tiny space being heated. I have a 5kw and even at -20°F it was way too much for a DCSB with a GFC.

 

You have any experience with those? I thought about one of those, but decided to steer clear of propane heat. The Mr. Buddy propane heater I had in my RTT put out good heat, but everything was always wet. It would eventually evaporate the water off of gear, but that would just end up on the canvas of the tent and then freeze even with the windows almost wide open.

Not sure if the Propex would do much better, my understanding is that is just the nature of propane heat. In my experience the diesel heaters do a much better job of taking moisture out of the air, almost like a wood stove.

 

No worries man, that is a story worth sharing for sure. You wouldn't happen to know the seller you got it from? There are a couple that seem to do better QC than the rest, Happybuy being one of them. Regardless still can't be too careful.

 

It is an indirect heat source so there would be no water from combustion making its way into the heated air. Look it up videos on it, good information out there on these

 

Yeah I had a feeling, but this 5kw was about $40 cheaper than the 2kws with good reviews at the time. Figured I could just run it as low as possible in the bed and just open the windows to get a cross breeze goin if it got too hot. Then if I felt like trying to heat the rtt, annex, and bed I could crank it up.

You wouldn't happen to know the pump frequency and fan speed you're running would ya?

 

There are a few versions of controllers for the heaters; one of them is a digital thermostat that will hold a set temperature. We have one and love it.

You can buy the heater with it or buy it separately for $20.

WonVon 12/24V 3/5KW Car Air Diesel Heater With LCD Switch, Air Parking Heater With Remote Control For Car

https://smile.amazon.com/WonVon-Diesel-Heater-Parking-Control/dp/B08HCYHPHJ

That controller also lets you adjust the pump frequency directly by changing modes. Downside- still not sure how to get it to read in F instead of C

 

@MuddySquirrel big fan of that one, it came on mine too. Definitely beats the simple dial. I like how it shows when the different components are active, should make troubleshooting easier. Guess we'll just have to figure out temps in Celsius like the rest of the world haha

 

I know this is an old thread but hoping you could help me out. I'm looking at the same HappyBuy unit on Amazon. How has it been working for you so far? Any issues with carbon monoxide?

Thanks in advance