Auxillary Heater yet again

[PeteK]

Good morning all, Firstly hello, I'm new to the site. I have yet another Auxiliary Heater issue on my wife's 2005 Mk2 Galaxy. (seems a common problem) This site has been a great help so far with diagnostics, Unfortunately i still have a duff heater. To date i have checked the cold temp sensor, Dossing pump and water pump under the scuttle all work as advertised. I have removed the heater a D5Z-F, striped it down and checked that the air motor works and the glow plug works, All satis so far. What i do not have is a good fault VDCS tool, Can any of you guys advise where to get one from and as a quick fix is any of you guys with one in the North Wiltshire area who could do me a huge favour and read the codes for me? I suspect i have a faulty control module but need to read the codes to be sure.
Many thanks in advance for any advice.

[insanitybeard]

Howdy!

Mark (Mirez / forum admin) is in the Westbury area so he may be able to help.......

Unfortunately the D5Z-F's do seem to be prone to ECU controller failure, I did have a go at de-potting mine but it wasn't easy and I damaged mine in the process, cheapest replacements I could find were in Germany for about Ã,£180 including postage.

VCDS lite can be downloaded for free if you have a laptop you can run it on, you only require a relatively cheap lead from the likes of  to connect the laptop to your car, more on it here.

[PeteK]

Many thanks Paul, Great info. I will give that a go. Youu never know the system may just be locked out?  OK i live in hope.

[PeteK]

So I've downloaded VCDS lite and got a lead, Got it all working and it's showing a glow plug short to ground. could anyone give me a steer for the next action? I've physically checked the plug and it glows nice and hot. So I'm guessing it might be a wire problem. would any one know where the source of the lead is in the car so I can run a continuity check from there to the heater? Many thanks

[insanitybeard]

I'm afraid those kind of glow plug open/ short circuit to ground fault codes are common when the ECU has packed up, mine had exactly the same codes.

Just put D5Z-F into the site search, you'll find a few threads come up on it! 

[Chrispb]

I'm afraid Paul's right the controller points to everything else being at fault apart from itself.

[PeteK]

Agree guys. Looks like I will have to bite the bullet and buy a replacement. Has anyone given any thought to trying to heat proof the control unit? possibly fitting a heat barrier between it and the heater?

[insanitybeard]

It's a good point, not something I've considered (but as yet I haven't actually resurrected my booster heater! Maybe before the onset of winter......), worth a go if you are able to find some kind of thin gasketing type product to act as an insulator, though the retaining screws will still conduct heat into the aluminium ECU casing.

[niall]

Hi there

I've tried depotting the ecu, resoldered/touched-up all the connections then I put house insulation(glass wool) over the ecu board AND covered the ecu housing in a heat resistant (Kapton) tape AND isolated the screws that hold down the ecu using silicone tubing on the screws to lift the ecu off of the water/burner chamber. Then I ran the unit on a bench taking measurement with an IR thermometer. I can't remember the the temperatures but I know that around the screws still got nearly as hot as the chamber walls.
The water inside the wall gets to 80degrees so I think the aluminium got to approx. 60 -70 deg.
Because of all of the aluminium that heat transfers directly to the ecu board...ie. not good. If you check some of the specs of the I.C's used on the ECU board they state a max operating temp of 60degC.
All that heat is not good.

I had a spare complete Aux heater however this one was intermittently working as well. Coming up with all sorts of errors, just like the original one in the car.

So, I decided to remove the ecu from the heat and placed it in a waterproof electrical junction box/housing.

Its a bit of a job to desolder some of the wires from the board because of their size.

I did this to both of the heaters I have. I bought some splash proof 10 way connectors on ebay and used these to be able to interchange ecu's should I have to.

But....since I did this...I haven't had to.

Last winter the Aux heater on the car worked...all the way up to mid April...when the temps finally crept above 10degC!!!!!!!

I have some more pics if any one is interested?

[insanitybeard]

That's interesting Niall, are you saying you created a separate waterproof housing for the controller circuit board and isolated it from the main burner unit? I'm assuming you had to lengthen some of the wiring to accomplish this?

Did you actually find dry solder joints or damage to the circuit board & repair it to get it working again? My first depotting was a guinea pig as I damaged the connector & board in the process!

If you have pictures etc to do a writeup then that would be useful info to have on the forum, especially as it's a fault which seems to plague the later Mk2's with the D5Z-F booster!

[SilverBeast]

What did you use to depot I have my original heater in the garage waiting for me to have a look at it some time. Any pictures and details of the connector/box you used would also be useful. Thanks

[niall]

Well, it was a bit of a mess to depott as I'm sure ye know. I used a lollipop stick/coffee stirrer to remove most of the big 'jelly' and a tweezers and a small fine pointed piece of plastic to remove most of the smaller stuff around the chips(IC's ) carefully!!!. I used an xacto knife(scalpel) to cut around the edge of the board, to separate it from the metal housing, as much as possible.
Desoldering the wires to the board is possibly the hardest part. A fair bit of heat is needed particularly on the wires used for ground(-) as these soak the heat form the soldering iron and make melting the solder difficult. I used a 'Pace Desoldering Station' to help me(google it). However if you can get some solder 'wick' or 'braid' (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-0-mm-Desoldering-Wick-Braid-solder-Mop-Desolder-/121131571885), this will work just as well with more time and patience!! When desoldering, apply more solder to the wire first, this gives the iron something bigger to heat initially and attaches itself to the solder in and around the wire in the hole so when you apply the wick the solder gets sucked out of the hole!! Look up youtube on how to use wick.
A lot of levering, and f-ing , the board comes free from the potting under it. On both occasions a large electrolytic capacitor that is soldered to the board remained in the housing!! It gets damaged but you can replace it with any similar cap.(check the voltage and capacitance).Most old scrap radios or electronics will have these. I'm sure I have run the board without it!
WRT the re-boxing of the controller, I'll dig out and take some pics of the one I have on the bench.

Because I was getting a lot of metering pump errors I replaced the IC(integrated Circuit) that drives/works the metering pump. I thought this might have been getting hot on the board so I wired it off the board...you'll see in the pics. I'm not convinced that this was necessary but pump errors did reduce/disappear.
I didn't find any solder joint problems but did touch-up/reflow/resolder as many IC legs as I could. Looks like a dogs dinner now!


N.

[niall]

As promised...some pics of controller out of aluminium housing and in a waterproof enclosure.....

[attach=1]
[attach=2]
[attach=3]

10 pin connector...like this one   http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-Set-Car-Waterproof-Electrical-Wire-Connector-Plug-AWG-10-Pin-Way-Terminals-/321818541136?hash=item4aede13c50
[attach=4]
[attach=5]
[attach=6]
[attach=7]
[attach=8]
[attach=9]
[attach=10]

Here you can see where I replaced the metering pump driver IC...it's a VN750 driver..http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/IC-DRIVER-HIGH-SIDE-P2PAK-Part-VN750B5-E-/391124374162?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item5b10d45292
I attached a bolt/screw to it to act as a heatsink..but I don't think it needs it...it doesn't get hot during operation, just barely warm.
[attach=11]

[attach=12]
[attach=13]

[gregers]

 

[insanitybeard]

Good job! Where did you locate the housing when you reinstalled the heater? Did you mount it or leave it freefloating?

[niall]

Thanks!!
I just tied the box up loosely with some cable-ties to the chassis and the water pipes. The cables I made coming from the heater could have been a bit longer actually, that would have given me more scope where to mount the box.
Now at least if one controller starts acting up I can swap it out easily using the connectors.

I've done a new video, just need to upload to Youtube.

An interesting note on the dosing/metering pump and diesel. I've noticed during my faffing around with these heaters that the longer you leave these pumps unused the worse they get.

What I mean is, they gum up with diesel. If you leave the diesel sitting in the fuel line for more than say 6 weeks, a gum like sticky substance accumulates. Now I don't think it's anything to do with my setup on the bench....is the diesel reacting with the plastic tubing I'm using or what? I do know they put detergents and anti-bacterial into diesel to stop this type of growth. Plus most diesel is now being mixed with bio-diesel at the refineries.

Anyway, this gum stops the dosing/metering pump from working. It's happened on my bench loads of times if I haven't run the heater for a while.
When the heater is turned on, sometimes the pump doesn't 'click' or pump at all if very gummed up. Just the other day when I went to do a video for Youtube the pump was clicking/pumping but you could hear, by the low sound of the clicking, that it wasn't pumping properly. I assume it was partially gummed up.
To sort this I had to disconnect the pump from the controller and put 12v repeatedly across the terminals of the pump, until it starts shooting diesel!!
If it gets very gummed up you have to remove the little filter on the front of the pump and clean with wd40 or spirits.

I wonder how many of you have experienced this? 

N.

[woodrjh]

Been struggling with my auxiliary heater for some time now. It's a D5W-F 7M3 815 071B. This has the ceramic glow plug with the wire tails and the D5Z style controller.

It's off the car now, and thanks to the efforts of Niall, I'm going to have a go!

Mine has a problem with the metering pump, there's no output from the controller to the pump so I suspect the driver chip could be the issue.

After a lot of googling and thanks to google translate, I found this on a Polish web site.

http://obrazki.elektroda.pl/4182857600_1388677563.jpg



I think that it is a circuit diagram for the D5Z style controller.

Here are the translations for the diagram:

Не задействованы в D5Z-F, D5S-F
Not used in D5Z-F, D5S-F
============================
Для D5S-F
For D5S-F
============================
В прямоугольники обозначены ножки и микропроцессора
The boxes are marked with legs and a microprocessor
====================
Вентилятор
Ventilator
=====================
Свеча накала
Candle Heater
======================
Датчик пламени
Flame sensor
======================
Дозирующий насос
Dosing pump
========================

There are also the following if it's any help:

http://obrazki.elektroda.pl/2785696700_1388677561.jpg

http://obrazki.elektroda.pl/7556980500_1388677559.jpg

They are all from this thread:

http://www.elektroda.pl/rtvforum/topic685394-30.html

I've attached the files in case the disappear in the future.

Looking forward to seeing the latest video Niall.

Cheers,

Rick

[niall]

woodrjh...Well done on your research!!! I've been looking for these schematics for yonks!
I'd say the middle image is the correct one for the D5Z-F, I recognise some of the part numbers.

Best of Luck with your heater!!

[woodrjh]

I found this thread to be useful:

http://mikrob.ru/viewtopic.php?f=355&t=32849

Все о дополнительном подогревателе VW Sharan

translates as:

All of the additional heater VW Sharan

Google translate is a really useful tool...

They mention using heat to remove the potting (e.g. hairdryer) so I may try that...

I read that in Poland and Russia in the Winter, the auxiliary heater is essential is you want any warmth inside the car. Brrrr....

Cheers,

Rick

[woodrjh]

This needs translating (from Russian), but this is also helpful.

It's more information and photos of the D5Z style controller, de-potting and repair.

http://mikrob.ru/download/file.php?id=206985

I couldn't post it as it's too large for the attachment limit.

Cheers,

Rick

[niall]

As Promised...links to two riveting, nail-biting, cliff-hanger, videos , I made of the Eber D5Z-F working with the controller housed in a separate box.
Caution...do not watch late at night!!!!!

..Enjoy!!!!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLt9MtNBFqI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-ozI2leM3k

N.

[gregers]

thats some test rig you set up there

i remembered that noise once or twice.

[Chrispb]

Music for D5Z-F owners