Eberspacher goes bang followed by white smoke

[Psycloud]

I'm pretty sure this is going to be bad news

 

We turned on our heating (Eberspacher D5W) and after the normal startup sequence it suddenly went bang followed by a load of white smoke from the exhaust, then it shut itself down (although the fan continued to run until we manually turned it off).

 

After a while we tried restarting and the went through the start up sequence and fired up and ran but with continuous white smoke from the exhaust. After a minute or so we shut it down again and it powered down normally. So I'm guessing something bad happened inside the unit?

 

Tomorrow I will take it apart (nothing to lose) but can anyone shed some light on what I'm likely to find and if it will be repairable? It reminds me of when a head gasket went on an old Ford Escort diesel van I had in the eighties.

 

Thanks

 

David

 

[GUMPY]

quite often after a failed start there is excess diesel in the chamber this takes a while to burn off when the unit starts again and causes white smoke.

If you only ran it for a minute when it restarted then its unlikely to clear it can take 10 minutes until it gets properly hot to clear fully.

 

If it starts again run it for a while, ignore the fog, it may well clear.

Edited January 29, 2017 by Loddon

[Flyboy]

Could be frozen due to lack of antifreeze in the system ? The white smoke could be steam after the water jacket went bang and split. Pure hypotheses on my part but possible. I hope I'm wrong.

[Psycloud]

Thanks for the replies so far. There is antifreeze in the system and today is one of the warmer days we've had this year (it runs daily without issue in the freezing weather) so I'm thinking either the internal gasket went bang or indeed the jacket has split. There hasn't been a failed start so to speak, just 2 starts with a mountain of white smoke. I think it is steam, there is no major smell to it :/

[chubby]

From time to time my eber D5WSC lets me down . It will , quite literally just stop dead .

I will then allow the timer to count down to zero & try it again . 9/10 it will fire up as usual but there will be huge amounts of white smoke exiting the the exhaust .

Several years ago i had to dimantle it , decoke it , replace parts & rewire the fuses . I received much advice from the forum during this repair work . Amongst the advice i was warned that when eventually the eber sparks back into life it is likely there ll be lots of white smoke if it takes several attempts to fire up & this is because the dosing pump will have pumped excess diesel into tje combustion chamber during the previous start up attempt / attempts .

The advice was that there may well be alot of smoke but i was not to " bottle it " & shut it down & that the excess diesel will burn off as white smoke until it was all gone .

So , nowadays when the eber lets me down occasionally i expect large amounts of white smoke & after ten minutes or so it all burns off and normal service is resumed .

All that said , it has never " gone bang " so i cannot comment on that but if tje eber goes thru the starting sequence as expected then perhaps just leave it to burn white smoke - its quite scary as it looks like somethings wrong but its just excess diesel burning , & you ve gotta have the balls to let it run until its all gone

[MtB]

I'm puzzled about what the bang was. The white smoke is quite possibly steam if the heat exchanger has cracked or as keeps being said, could just be excess fuel.

 

Presumably you've tried running it for ten minutes by now. Did the white exhaust die down or does it continue unabated? Is the system kept full of water with an open header tank? Is the level falling?

 

Mind you, tiny amounts of water leaking into the HE will produce vast volumes of steam.

[Psycloud]

OK - I haven't run it for 10 minutes yet as was too scared until I saw these responses so I will do that tomorrow (but dark now and don't want to scare the neighbours). Thanks again for the replies

[NMEA]

I see this happen even after I have properly serviced and tested a heater as having a correct burn rate and correct Bacharach smoke number on my test rig and refitting on the boat. Numerous failed starts before service have saturated the exhaust tube and or silencer. This produces much smoke as the exhaust heats up, it can get hot enough when sufficiently heated to ignite and make a bang. The saturation has been so bad in some instances that an exhaust system replacement was required. Easy to check by disconnecting the exhaust and seeing if the heater smokes directly, if it does then get somebody with the correct kit, experience and spares availability to service it and adjust the burn rate.

[billS]

It might just be a sign that it needs a new pope...

[MtB]

It might just be a sign that it needs a new pope...

 

 

Or a new pipe...

(Greenied!)

[mrsmelly]

It might just be a sign that it needs a new pope...

 

I thought that was when smoke came out of the chimney and was usualy black but not always?

[bizzard]

Burt Bacharach is Wishin and smokin.

Edited January 30, 2017 by bizzard

[cereal tiller]

Burt Bacharach is Wishin and smokin.

Yeh,it was a big hit for Dusty Springfield?

 

CT

[bizzard]

Yeh,it was a big hit for Dusty Springfield?

 

CT

And ''Walk on by'' Dionne Warwick., Didn't know he wrote songs about bangiing Eberspachers though.

Edited January 30, 2017 by bizzard

[cereal tiller]

And ''Walk on by'' Dionne Warwick., Didn't know he wrote songs about bangiing Eberspachers though.

Arthur Brown wrote one?

[NMEA]

Yeh,it was a big hit for Dusty Springfield?

 

CT

Though it's heavily associated with Dusty (probably the best version too) she didnt really have a big hit with it here, the Mersybeats took it to the highest position in the IK charts.

[Psycloud]

Well - I bit the bullet and let it run for a while today (as advised above) and the smoke stopped reasonably quickly and I left it running for a couple of hours with no further smoke. What I did observe was that (with the deck boards up) the exhaust lagging appeared to be discharging the same type of smoke, which also stopped after a while.

 

I am now of the opinion that the rain over the weekend had collected in the exhaust and because we hadn't run it all weekend until last night, this was being evaporated causing the smoke/steam. The pipe lagging had also gotten wet when I was looking at the problem in the rain yesterday evening which may explain why for a short while the lagging was also discharging the same white cloud.

 

There is every possibility that this has happened before but the boiler generally comes on at 6am while we are asleep so any strange plumes wouldn't be noticed. Also, the bang I heard may just have been coincidental but because it was coupled with the huge plume I assumed it was the boiler.

 

I will start her again later and make more observations - but I am eternally grateful for the advice to let it run for 10 minutes even if it felt very scary to do so. Thank you to all who have responded