(gentle music)
- Hello and welcome to this video from Kiravans
looking at the MV Airo 2 Diesel Heater.
In this video, I'm going to unpack the contents
and go through quickly what every component does
as you fit it into your van and then we'll take a look at
how you fit it into a Volkswagen T5 van
and also give you some instruction
on how it operates once it's in the van.
So let's take a look at what's in the box.
Okay, so what have we got?
First of all you've got the diesel heater unit here.
Now this can be mounted either inside the van
or underneath the vehicle.
If you're gonna mount it inside the van,
you'll need one of these fitting kits
which is designed to go underneath the driver's seat
in a VW T5 van.
You basically, you drill a large hole,
place this in and bolt it to the floor
and then the heater fits on top of that.
If you want to fit your heater underneath the vehicle,
you'll need one of these stainless steel brackets
which bolts onto the chassis
and this is how I'm gonna fit one today.
So we'll look at this in more detail.
Now if I go through this from the fuel tank
up to the heater and then into the van,
you'll see the process involved.
So very quickly, we start off by dropping the fuel tank
from the van, taking out the sender unit,
drilling a small hole in the top of the sender unit,
and inserting this fuel pipe into it.
Now this needs to be cut to the right length
depending on what kind of vehicle you're putting it into.
From here, we have a fuel line like this
which then goes to the fuel filter
and into the fuel pump
which is suspended off the vehicle chassis
with this rubber mounted, rubber spring mount.
From the fuel pump you then have a little bit more fuel line
which takes the fuel to the heater unit.
The fuel goes in here.
Also underneath here we've got the electrical cable
which runs off to power the pump with this wire.
This inlet here is for fresh air
for combustion into the unit.
So this draws air from outside the vehicle.
This one here is the exhaust.
Okay, so that goes on there.
And then you get to your actual heater.
One end sucks in cold air
and the other end blows out hot air.
And your hot air gets to your van through one of these
and using the plastic vents.
Inside the vehicle you've got your wiring loom
which takes power from your leisure battery,
plugs into the unit.
You need 12 volt electric for these,
initially to spark it, to light the flame,
and then also to drive the fan as it's working.
And also incorporated in this
is the digital control panel and timer.
And specifically for these kits,
we also have this nice feature which is a temperature sensor
which can be mounted somewhere useful in the vehicle
so that when you set your thermostat,
the heater will turn on and off
and keep everything at a nice, constant temperature for you.
So it looks like a lot of bits,
but actually, once you get started, it's not too bad.
You also get some instructions with the kit,
and let's take a look at how it's installed.
Okay, so this is the vehicle
that we're gonna be putting the heater in today.
It's a standard Volkswagen T5, 2010 model
and it's really important before you start this job,
make sure that your diesel tank is pretty empty.
So this one, the light has come on to say
that it's nearly empty
'cause as you lower that diesel tank down,
if it's full of diesel,
it's just physically too heavy to manhandle.
The first step to fitting one of these heaters
is to get the fuel tank dropped down
from the bottom of the van.
It's located in this area under here.
There'll be some plastic panels to remove first
and then you'll see a big, black, plastic fuel tank
and it's got three metal straps holding it up.
Six bolts need to come out
and then you drop your fuel tank down.
Just be careful 'cause it may be heavy
and you could put some wooden blocks
or something underneath to support it.
Before lowering your fuel tank,
you'll need to disconnect these two diesel pipes
just in front of the tank,
and then release your fuel filler pipe
by undoing the small screw holding the cap on,
taking out the cap.
You may want to slacken off the little metal door
at this point,
and then you remove the plastic trim
by pushing it to the right at the top
before levering out the bottom.
And then finally undo this nut here.
This bit here is called the sender unit.
This is a spring-loaded device
that goes down into the diesel tank
and then your diesel pipes are here
and it's a pressurized system.
So what we need to do is un-pop these two fuel lines,
unscrew this and take the sender unit out.
And to pop these off,
they've just got a little tab on the back,
you push it in, and just pop those off like that.
And while I was under the van
I disconnected the electrical connection here
with the little red tab which pops up.
Now this locking ring
that holds the sender unit in the tank is really tight,
so you can use a piece of wood
and a hammer to loosen it like this.
Once you get the locking ring off,
the sender unit will pop up a little bit
and you just need to gently take it out.
Be careful not to bend the fuel gauge float
which is on a wire at bottom,
you'll see it when you get to this point.
So just angle it and take it gently out.
Now the sender unit will be full of diesel
so have a bucket ready to empty it into.
Once you have the sender unit out of the van,
we need to drill a hole to put the stand pipe in.
So if you look underneath,
there's a little down stand plastic pipe
which needs to get drilled out
and on top there's a square imprint.
So in the middle of that square, put a little dot
and you'll need to use a six mil drill bit
and basically just drill down
through the top of the sender unit
which will remove the little plastic down stand below.
It's a good idea to do some protection just below
to stop any plastic going into the sender unit.
I've used paper towels here.
Once you have your hole drilled in the top,
you need to cut your metal fuel standpipe down to length
and for a T5/T6 van, you want it 19 centimeters long
from the underside of the right angle.
A sharp hacksaw will get through it quite well
and then you'll need to deburr the end with a metal file
just so that no contamination clings onto it
once it's in the fuel tank.
You feed the standpipe down
through the top of your sender unit now
through your new hole, put the little nut on.
Make sure the o-ring is still in place at the top of it
to get a good seal,
and you'll notice the pipe goes down
behind the translucent sprung pipe.
You can tighten this all up with a couple of spanners.
And then the next thing you need to do
is get one of the fuel pipe connectors,
put that on to the metal nozzle
and, with a jubilee clip, tighten the whole arrangement up.
Now you can return the sender unit to the fuel tank,
again taking care with the fuel gauge float.
The rubber seal takes a bit of work to get in
and then just press the unit down.
You'll notice there are two arrows,
one on the tank and one on the sender unit
which need to line up
and that's the final position for the unit.
Put the locking ring back on, screw it down
and then use your piece of wood and a hammer again
to tighten it up fully.
So now once you have this done,
it's a case of getting your fuel line
and pushing it well into the rubber connector hose
and securing with one of the jubilee clips.
Now you can reconnect the two diesel pipes
that just pop back onto the sender unit.
And all three of these fuel lines
can now be clipped into the plastic clips
that are already on the side of the fuel tank.
Next up you'll need to attach the fuel filter in line
with the fuel pump using the short lengths of fuel hose.
They've each got an arrow on them to show the direction
of fuel flow from the tank to the heater.
You will also need to attach
the rubber fuel pump clip like this.
With the diesel tank fitted back under your van,
you'll need to reconnect these two diesel pipes.
You can now attach the filter
and fuel pump assembly to this black bracket
located just in front of your fuel tank
using the washer and nut provided.
Connect the fuel line from the sender unit to the filter end
and another length of line to the pump end
which will head off toward the other side of the van.
Notice the way this pump assembly is at a slight incline.
Moving over now to the driver's side of the vehicle,
you need to install the cold air inlet pipe
by drilling a hole in the door step
and installing the vent like this.
Screw a length of ducting onto the back of the vent
and then feed it through the hole
in the metalwork of the van.
I drilled a slightly bigger hole in the metalwork
than I did in the plastic step.
This can then get secured with a jubilee clip on the back.
Now it's entirely up to you where you choose
to have your warm air outlet in the van
but in reality, there aren't that many places
where you can get clearance
to drill up through the floor of the van
and have it come out somewhere useful
so I've gone for an area under the driver's seat
and then a length of ducting going to a panel
at the back of the seat base and coming out of a vent there.
This setup allows me to have enough room left
to put a leisure battery under the driver's seat
and the small hole you can see in the floor
is one that's already in there
when the van left the factory.
It comes with a rubber grommet in it and is really useful
for passing the wires down through the floor.
The heater unit itself
gets this small rubber gasket on it first,
so thread the wire through
and then place on the bottom of the heater.
This provides cushioning.
Place your stainless steel metal bracket on
oriented like this
and then use the washers and nuts
to secure it onto the heater.
Now you can connect your cold air inlet for combustion
using the jubilee clip and also your exhaust pipe.
We've chosen to mount this stainless steel bracket
on the chassis member as shown.
Now it involved drilling two 7 1/2 mil diameter holes
and then using an eight mil tapping bit
in order to create a thread.
We then used our M8 bolts with sprung washers and Loctite
to secure the mounting plate under the van.
The first wiring job is a simple one.
It's just using the black cable provided
to extend the wire from the heater unit
over to the fuel pump.
Connecting up the main wiring loom
takes a little bit longer.
The only connection below the van floor
is the one for the heater connector
which plugs into the main heater unit.
Everything else goes above the floor.
Your remote temperature sensor
can be mounted somewhere in the van that's useful,
usually in the front half of the vehicle
due to the length of the wire.
The battery positive and negative
obviously go to your leisure battery
and your control panel can be mounted somewhere useful again
in the back of the van.
When mounting this control unit,
you'll need to drill a hole big enough
to get the two plastic connection blocks through
and also put on the rubber mount on the back of the unit
and secure with a single screw through the middle of it.
Okay so, I'm just under the van
and recording this on my iPhone so the quality's a bit poor.
Just to give you a quick overview
of the heater installation under the van.
This is obviously our mounting plate
that we've screwed up into the chassis member here
with a couple of threaded bolts.
We've tapped out the threads, used a sprung washer
and some Loctite to tighten that right up
to make sure they don't come out over time.
Our heater is mounted to that.
We've got our fuel line coming in here which goes off
and, I've put some of these covers back on again,
but it runs off to the other side of the van to the pump.
This is our combustion fresh air intake
which I've just cable-tied here
and kept it pointing down so no moisture can get up into it.
The exhaust pipe I have run over here
and drilled a small hole in the van there,
put a clip on, a metal P-clip to hold it.
And I've cut a hole in the plastic tray
so that it can fit back up there.
Don't let this touch anything
because it's gonna get really hot as the heater burns.
This is our pipe
which goes up through the bottom of the van,
comes out under the driver's seat.
And our cabling,
this is our main wire coming out of the heater,
comes along here, just cable-tied it all together.
There was quite a lot of spare so I've put that up there,
cable-tied it all up in place.
And then this one here runs off and up
through this grommet under the driver's seat
to the battery and to the control panel.
And there's one more wire
which goes across to the fuel pump.
So that's basically it for the under-van installation.
Just before we go into testing the system,
there was one bit I glossed over
and that was the connection of this fuel line
from the fuel pump across underneath the van
and connecting it to the heating unit
with another short length of fuel line.
Once you've got everything connected up,
you can test your system by pressing the button
on the right-hand side of the controller once or twice
and then clicking the thermostatic temperature up
to a desired level.
After a few seconds you'll hear the unit start up
and it'll attempt to start pulling diesel
through the system.
You'll need to go through this process three or four times.
You can speed up the shutdown process
by pulling the fuse out and then putting it back in again.
And after three or four times you should find
that it actually fires and starts producing some heat.
The time taken is really just to get the diesel
through the system.