Woke up smelling the diesel heater fumes. Not the normal fumes but different. Something was not right. I got down to 45° inside Clifford last night.
We have never done anything to this heater yet. So it’s probably time to service it.
The heater wasn’t igniting. It was warming up just no ignited to blow warm air.
It was billowing out white smoke. I checked the glow plug with a DVOM and it was within spec.
Started looking for symptoms online and for that it wasn’t igniting and found that there is an atomizer screen that goes around the glow plug to turn the fuel into a mist. They say it gets all caked with soot if you use the heater on low a lot. Needs to be tan on high 5-10 before shutting it down to help burn off the soot to make it last longer.
On to editing podcasts today for Gayla. I also edited some pictures too.
Had a snack for lunch and took the dogs for a walk down to Henry’s Fork.
After our walk I had a wild hair and took apart the diesel heater. When I say I took it apart, I tore it way apart.
I got the glow plug out and it looked great basically new looking.
I proceeded to take apart the combustion chamber and there’s where the problem was.
There was so much soot inside there it was pretty much clogged.
I cleaned it out the best I could. I also pulled the atomizer out from around the glow plug and cleaned it up with some brake cleaner.
Gayla suggested that we pull off the exhaust pipe and check it. Glad we did that. It too was caked up all on the inside with soot.
After cleaning everything the best we could it was time to put everything back together.
There was a paper gasket I broke when I was taking the combustion chamber off. I needed to make a new one out of thick 140 lb watercolor paper I had in Clifford.
We got everything back together and tested the diesel heater. With fingers crossed it works and works great.
Everything warmed up and ignited like it was supposed to.
After a successful field repair we celebrated with brisket and butter and a piece of chocolate.
0 miles driven today.
