'Chinese Diesel Heater' - is it Good out of the box ?

Yay, the 'Not a Flamethrower' showed up !

Got a cheap $109 2KW Chinese diesel heater on Amazon. No specific reason for buying from maXpeedingRods, except that they provide products to youtubers for review without influencing the outcome. As exemplified by Mispronounced Adventures

So I thought their quality must be at least an iota better than the rock bottom 20% cheaper sellers of the same kit out there.

Content of the kit:

Buyers are promised this:

But instead I got that:

Holes in the fuel line

Bogus and useless manual
(45-90° or 0-30°?, pump is upside down vs actual mounting, missing a/b/c line diagram, etc)

No tank-to-line nipple

Fan rubbing on casing

Combustion air intake pipe made of... cardboard
(should fare well under the chassis on wet / muddy / snowy roads !)

Fuel filter mesh gaping to the winds...

Crappiest brazing job ever on a fuel pipe
(probably hides cracks, this thing is going to blow up in my face one day 😅)

Broken ECU tabs

The 2 bottom screws were ~8mm too short.
I stripped the casing's threads on reassembly.
Had to replace with long screw + lock washer + nut

But really, if I'm honest, that's probably all...

A great 'strict quality control' job, maXpeedingRODS !

But hey, it's not like I expected much for $109. Can still buy another 19 such heaters for the price of 1 Eberspacher Airtronic B2L AS3 😲

Of course, before using this safety horror show in the van, several upgrades will be needed. First, replacing the do-nothing sticker spacers at the bottom of the casing by a 2.5mm thick plastic piece eliminated the rubbing from the fan:

Being partial to having holes in my fuel lines, and prefering a rigid line over a soft one in such a pulsing-pump system, the leaky green snake was ditched in favor of a $13 rigid line kit:

The joke of a filter was also replaced by the genuine article for $16:

Finally, a $55 Fuel tank connection kit for Ford Transit was ordered, that simply plugs into the tank's Aux port:

And with that, after priming the pump with gasoline, this amazing piece of blatant copying of a German design was ready to huff and puff:

The fan spooled up for a minute, the glow plug glowed for a minute, the pump pumped for a minute, while the beast erratically emitted woop woop sounds and puffs of white smoke... Then, once the chamber got up to temperature, the woop wooping became a steady beat 😀

Sounds good, right ? Not really... It should be emitting a continuous combustion sound, not woop woops, nor a beat 😞

But that's gasoline for you: much faster combustion than diesel. So each time the pump pulses, a woop follows. Same as when people eat beans !

Finally, cranked up to the high heat output setting, the sound became an infinitely long wooooosshh... 😍

However, a few disturbances could still be heard. Meaning that the combustion is not 100% stable. Not too surprising though, seeing this test's conditions: 5600' (1700m) altitude, 36°F (2°C) cold air, default pump & fan settings, and gasoline instead of diesel.

So now that the fire breathing dragon is alive, it's time to tinker with a few things to tune it for very cold air, high altitude and sipping gasoline. This camper van is about to get toasty !

Should just be a walk in the park from now on !