Eberspacher Airtronic 3 review and teardown. Airtronic 1 vs 2 vs 3. Espar AS3 D2L vs. D2 sound test

This video will take a look at 3 generations of Airtronic diesel heaters.

[@poellot]

I am a small fleet mechanic and we have about 10 of the original airtronic heaters , when a driver says it's not working it has only ever been a bad gasket for the cumbustion chamber. Simply disassemble clean and put in a new gasket. Recently I installed a new airtronic 3. I have not disassembled one yet, the wiring looks more difficult difficult being in one plug rather than each sensor and glow plug having there own plugs.

[@poellot]

I am wanting to buy one for myself. I like the brushless motors, but looking at the design of them, I am leaning towards buying a 2 and avoiding the 3.

[@ottoolsen9676]

well i have a 1 gen D4 on my bench now with 20457 hours of total runningtime, and yes it has been fixed several times before, for the readers reading this, it has not manage this without many parts beeing replaced some several times, but the ecu is the stock + some of the parts on it, and it is pretty worn out, i have seen D4 brushed motor with runningtime of more then 7000 hours, but as you sad, there is no rule here, somtimes bearing fails, somtime the brushes, and at a lot less hours on them, the D5 can if you are luckey run 9000 hours, the motor is then a mess of worn our parts and brush dust, just a horrible thing to open. it is a shame that eberspacher did not do the new heater compatible with the older harness and display, as we have many fishing boats using them, and have several heater's for swap, when 1 is worn out, there are no replacement, exept changing the entire system. and many talks about a china heater to replace them, the price diffrence is just to big, eberspacher has become verry expensive, parts to. it is a mutch better heater and system, but so expensive, i have been working on theese heaters for 25 years, and still do, but less.

[@Lucentlens]

The burn chamber - such a fundamental redesign! I reckon it's as a whole tuned to burn much hotter, to help manage soot production - almost no way to run it 'cool' & create soot. However - this then means that the burn chamber needed to be smaller, for a given size of fin-area.

[@DIYHelper]

Very good point, we have applications where 2 kW is too much and the heater runs mainly on low power levels. The old Airtronic will produce soot in this conditions, it will be interesting to see if it is the case for the 3rd generation,.

[@Lucentlens]

@@DIYHelper Indeed - most interesting! I have this theory/notion - that, with combustion intake & exhaust completely unrestricted - the unit will not make any soot, even on low power. In a real engine, soot happens in lack of oxygen conditions - so - assuming that the heater is tuned correctly out of the box (i.e. lowest fan RPM is enough to suitably feed air also to the combustion process, at the lowest-chosen pump rate) - then it should just never create soot. This would then be an argument for, for example, not even putting a pipe on the combustion intake at all (depending on the location) - in my car, it's sat high in the boot, & easy to leave off this pipe. Only the exhaust goes outside, & it's virtually 100% straight, no silencer, about 2 feet long. I don't get any soot on the inside of the exhaust pipe, so I'm assuming that very little (if any) is made inside. Some of these when opened up, are just clean. Soot *isn't* inevitable, I don't think.

[@DIYHelper]

Yes but even diesel engines do regeneration for the catalitic converter, where the problem with the heaters this regeneration depends on the user. It is never a problem where the heater gets to work a high power for 10 - 15 minutes every few hours but when I see soot and read out op hours from 1500 hours 1300 are only on low power. I get that it should not soot even like this but this how it is.

[@Lucentlens]

In this video - the A3 is much nicer & more refined - but, exactly like my Chinese diesel heater (sourced from MaxSpeedingRods) - this has made me love the Chinese stuff even more!

[@JGAN96]

which maxpeedingrods model do you have? do you have a link?

[@raczyk]

Why do you love thhe chiense heater more? Are the chinese heaters not much louder in operation thant nthe airtornics?

[@dhol267]

Another fantastic video. Thanks!

[@Lucentlens]

I think the rubber mount for the fan blade made zero difference - so they ditched it. However they could have 'pointed' to it as a quieting feature.

[@DIYHelper]

My guess also.

[@sanduafaceri2792]

Am cumpărat de vreo 2 luni un Vevor de 8 KW. și nu știu cum să-mi cumpăr ventilator de rezerva. În general sunt afișate de 5 KW. etc. Într-o discuție cu Vevor mi-au recomandat Amazon și Ebay, dar nici acolo nu vad ceva clar. Oare să-l desfac la sfârșit de sezon și sa masor piesele, garniturile? Cum vezi situația. Și ECU e diferit ca afișaj. E cel cu funcționare altitudine, care afișează un munte etc e o noua generație.

[@DIYHelper]

Sunt copii chinezești, ce pot sa zic sigur ca nu e de 8kw în rest nu știu ce piesa sa îți recomand pentru ca nu ma ocup doar de originale

[@Lucentlens]

Excellent video, analysis & commentary! I think they changed the internal design purely to differentiate from the Chinese copies! E.g. making the Hall sensor external, serves no good purpose whatsoever - it's not exactly as though it was a failure point! The original design was simple, compact, beautiful!

[@DIYHelper]

All manufacturers are driven by one thing, costs, it is very hard to stay competitive in the price range but also bring new features and improvements. Webasto, Eberspaecher could make the perfect heater with all options that you can think of but nobody would buy it because of the price tag. In this case they just used the burner that was developed for Hydronic 3 and works great on that one. We will see how these will be over time compared to old ones.

[@romansicher-fliegen5416]

Thank you for your Video! I have an airtronic 2 and is has a very high pitch electronic hissing noise when the fan is running. Did you notice that on the airtronic 3?

[@DIYHelper]

Since it is a brushless motor there is a possibility, I did not notice it myself during running, I will pay more attention next time I start one.

[@GraphRes]

Hello, thank you for this very interesting video ! Did you know when the Airtronic 3 will be available for sale? Good continuation ✌️

[@DIYHelper]

Hello, it should be already available.

[@GraphRes]

@@DIYHelper Thank you for the answer. But it's weird I can't find it on the internet 😕

[@DIYHelper]

Probably production is not 100% ramped up. This is the problem when you keep 3 generations on the market.

[@nauti0007]

Hello, thank you for your video. Did you compare the Airtronic S2 or S3 with the Webasto Air Top 2000 STC ? What is the most silent ? I have the S2 and when it stop and start again in the night, it is quite noisely, it blow way too strong ! Thank you.

[@DIYHelper]

I have the webasto but did not start it yet. S3 has a new way of starting. It takes into account the temperature of the heat exchanger and starts with the needed power. The S2 and S1 have a different burner and the high power starting is needed to ensure good burning. On this note I quess webasto has a similar technology burner as the s3 but I don't know yet how it works compared to the airtronic

[@nauti0007]

@@DIYHelper oh great thank you for your response. Good point for the S3 compare to the s2. I'll be interested if you can compare the S3 and air top 2000 stc because nobody has made this comparaison and they are the 2 I hesitate for my future campervan :) and they are the most popular in the market !

[@michaelgallo1435]

What about the B2L What do you think of the gasoline version compared to the diesel? I want to install either of them in my Jeep Wrangler JLU 2018

[@DIYHelper]

Hi, I didn't get my hand on the gasoline version yet. Eberspaecher for a long time didn't have a 2kw version of a gasoline heater, only the 4kw one. We almost exclusively have demand for the diesel heaters but I would have to say that the gasoline version will be very similar to the diesel one. Gasoline burns much cleaner than diesel so I don't think there will be problems with them.

[@jasonjoncas5998]

The #1 D2 the mesh surrounding the burn chamber as we saw in using a torch to clean has to touch the glow plug screen digging around will increase the space it acts lick a wick spreading the fuel around the circumference to burn even use a brass pipe style cleaner brush to clean the glow plug hole digging around will ruin the mesh and create a gap giving you a burner that will only last 10 hours just saying. The #3 no glow plug screen a failure point and more surface area in the burn chamber but wimpy electrical connections an other failure point time will tell. I have a #1 d2 Airtronic and a Hydronic both used to heat my garage have a car rad in a fixture the hydronic flows coolant through and a fan that pushes air through the rad works quite well the latter is under my work bench by my laptop I am quite comfortable there on cool days. My garage is bigger than normal 850 square feet but back to reliability you have to run these heaters once a month for 30 min even in the summer as said in the manual you can get away with the air unit but the Hydronic is not as forgiven its combustion fan has a very small space to the body that is aluminum that can build crust blocking the fan and lock it up running it cleans this.Thanks I am a diesel tech in a Freightliner dealership an I deal with these heaters tiny furnace and boilers they are amazing.

[@Tautank1]

Hi again, I just found this video. It could be amazing if you did include compression of the noise of the airtronic 2 with the other 2 models also. What is your opinion, is the 3rd generation really that much better than the 2nd one. What is the price of the 3rd compared to the 2nd gen and is it worthed. Thank you in advance! Todor

[@DIYHelper]

Hello, well it is a little better I did not compare 2nd a 3rd yet in a recording but I believe the 3rd is a little bit silenter due to the burner. I don't have a sound meter but I tried my best to record exactly at the same distance. As for the upgrade I don't think it's worth it at this point only if for some reason you must change the whole heater.

[@edsanders5479]

What are the reassembly torque values ?

[@mihaitaflan6021]

Salut,ce parere ai despre s3,merita, sau e mai bun webasto?

[@DIYHelper]

@@mihaitaflan6021 ca și calitate sunt la același nivel, cea mai mare diferență ar fi că S3 are reglaj automat în funcție de altitudine iar webasto nu.

[@mihaitaflan6021]

@@DIYHelper aici in sua motorina f proasta le distruge,se carbonizeaza repede.mult mai bine merg cu 50-50 motorina si kerosen

[@DIYHelper]

@@mihaitaflan6021 pai este S3 pe benzină

[@mihaitaflan6021]

@@DIYHelper s3 d2l e diesel

[@DIYHelper]

@@mihaitaflan6021 exact, dar AS3 B2L e benzină

[@nicoladriana]

What does AS3 D2L DS mean please.

[@DIYHelper]

Airtronic Small 3rd generation, diesel 2kw longlife(comercial). ds= I am not aware of this being used in naming of the heater

[@KenKnowledge]

Now that the Chinese are copying every heater out there and sells then dirt cheap, do you think that Eberspächer and Webasto will lower their price? O would imagine that they have a drop in sales numbers since their patent became available for others and most people buy the Chinese ones.

[@DIYHelper]

People who buy Chinese copies are mostly DIY guys. You will never see a reputable body builder or OEM installing them. There is still high demand for Eberspaecher and Webasto so I don't really think prices will drop. These guys actually develop new products a don't just make a xerox and sell it.

[@Kidsandthekooks]

Is the new one called the as3?

[@DIYHelper]

Depends on the size AS3, AM3, AL3, AXL3. But yes it should have the 3

[@stevendan9878]

I have a question if you dont mind

[@DIYHelper]

You can ask directly 😉

[@jasonjoncas5998]

OH subscribed.