Early XUD fuel heaters

spider · Unread post by **spider** » 05 Jan 2010, 14:54

The ones that are on the back of the block (you know the ones)

I had to bypass mine on my 205TD last year due to chasing air ingress around the system (it was also entering in the fuel primer too)

To cut a long story short, I bypassed the fuel heater and replaced the fuel filter / head with one of something else (I got it new from Ebay, although I'm not sure what its off, I think some Iveco maybe, I was in a rush, it was new and unused) , works well enough.

Now, as its cold I need some form of heating for it really, I was toying with cutting the return pipe to the expansion tank (the one that exits the "easy blocked" outlet in the top of the thermostat housing) and soldering the fuel line along side, after attempting to bend it around I made this: (sorry for dreadful picture quality)

Although crude, I'm expecting it to work in a fashion (a bit of warmth is better than nothing)

Unfortunately it's not practical to fit the "top hat" fuel filter assembly to a 205TD, I've looked into it, it will fit if you use a normally aspirated thermostat housing etc but you have to ignore the oil cooler pipes (which I am not sure if that's a really bad idea or not)

I thought about using a 306 one but the differences in the top hose arrangement would make it very difficult (again, its the oil cooler hoses)

Any thoughts on my "quick" fuel heater ?

, bearing in mind: The fuel pipe does run along side the bottle now (its snowing so I can't go get a pic of the current arrangement, its more or less standard to look at apart from a longer fuel hose)

spider · Unread post by **spider** » 06 Jan 2010, 18:05

Not had chance to try this (partly due to the snow and partly as I don't need to use the car at the moment) , although I will before I do.

Although I expect it to only give a little warmth it will be better than nothing at all as far as I can tell.

I'll post back when I have fitted it (!) and tried it (I'll feel the fuel filter for temperature after a while) and post my feedback.

I did look at one made with a glowplug but it would use about 170W which is too much, this may be the best quick alternative, as I say a tophat design of filter housing (as fitted 93 to 98) would of been the best way but its not practical due to the heater hoses and top rad hose on a DT 205. They never fitted this design to the turbo models for some reason, I'd guess more hoses would have to have been designed.

spider · Unread post by **spider** » 14 Jan 2010, 19:43

I fitted this the other day, although due to having a nasty bug / cold I've not used the car much.

Today I had to go and get a replacement alternator (brushes about completely gone) , will pop that on tomorrow.

I've already modified my mountings to use the 309 N/A ones

, as the tensioner was well past it a long time ago and it cost me £1 for the bracket from the scrappy and £4 for the new belt instead of I'd guess about £60 for the tensioner (it was originally a similar setup to the early 306XUD with the "lolipop" tensioner and the K0 belt up to about 2 years ago)

Back to the fuel heater: It has worked in a fashion, although my journey was short anyway. I'll post back some more feedback on this "modification" when I've had chance to get a decent run over the next week or so. I also have a small air ingress problem but I can see where that's happening and have something to fix that.

Unread post by **citroenxm** » 15 Jan 2010, 10:14

Why not instead upgrade the Thermostat house to the one that has the fuel filter sitting on top of it!

Much tidyer, much much easyer to change the filter, and makes use of the cooling system by warming the filter house

Paul

spider · Unread post by **spider** » 15 Jan 2010, 10:29

citroenxm wrote:Why not instead upgrade the Thermostat house to the one that has the fuel filter sitting on top of it!

Much tidyer, much much easyer to change the filter, and makes use of the cooling system by warming the filter house

Paul

You can't, not easily. I've looked into it.

, see my first post ^^^ where it starts "Unfortunately it's not practical to fit the "top hat"..." , which is a shame as I think this was their best ever design of fuel filter they ever had and certainly better than the later DW8 "clip" housing.

They never fitted that design to the turbo 205's. The later NA ones did have it, but these did not have the cooler pipes for the oil filter.

Due to the design of the thermostat housing and top hose outlet, the only way I could do it is by not plumbing in the oil cooler, or a lot of work mixing and matching hoses unfortunately.

Its a bit difficult to explain, if you see a NA 205D, you'll see it does have this filter arrangement but they don't have oil cooler pipes, and you can't easily get one with the outlets (say one of a 306) to then match up with a 205 top hose outlet stub.

Unread post by **citroenxm** » 15 Jan 2010, 16:43

Thats interesting.. Ive had experiance with 205 1.8 D engines and had noticed no oil cooler, but Ive only experianced the 1.8 Turbo D In a BX, which of course has a larger engine bay, but - actually, thinking about it, they had the same arrangement too, the 1.9 n/a had the Top Hat filter, but im certain the TX and TZ D turbos stayed with the seperate system..

Interesting!

Paul

spider · Unread post by **spider** » 15 Jan 2010, 18:19

Yes it is strange. I did think about just not bothering with the oil cooler hoses, but was then worried I would fry it

I can only guess they never did that for one of the following reasons:

> To use up stock of that filter design
> Two new hoses would have to be designed etc as the outlets are slightly different (not that different as I used one from an XUD9 to replace one of mine as they wanted silly money for it)

You can fit it, complete with using XUD9 oil cooler hoses, but the top hose will not fit due to the design and the main thermostat housing from a NA 205 does not have the outlets for the cooler. Difficult to explain you need to sort of see a few side-by-side really.

Regarding my home made fuel heater: I've only done about 5 miles today and it seems OK to be honest. Its not actually warming it up much (I was worried it would get it too hot and cause other problems, but then I thought about the TUD with its filter sat almost on the cylinder head)

Time will tell, I do need to modify it slightly and put back my one-way valve again though, but otherwise all seems OK.

Jobs for tomorrow:

Replace dead alt, light permanently on, brushes have gone to heaven although it is slightly charging (just)

Replace dying battery (dead cell!), cold weather has finished it off.

Tidy up the quick pipework I did for the fuel heater.

I'll hopefully grab a pic when its done, lack of rain pending obviously.

spider · Unread post by **spider** » 16 Jan 2010, 16:25

Had a terrible battle for a good hour putting the new alternator on. Reason simply being:

I had replaced in the past the tensioning system with one from a 309 NA (just the straight belt)

Trouble is, there's no room to get the big bolt out or the alt itself on a turbo 205 due to the rad size.

Had to take it to bits in situ, take the oil filter off to get the alt out etc, and then the difficult bit of holding the alt up (from underneath!) and trying to insert the big 21mm bolt by hand at a funny angle

The three bolts holding the replacement bracket on are a bit fiddly in situ to say the least.

It's on but not finished anyway, it went dark and its damp outside. Soon finish that off tomorrow along with the heating pipework, the nasty bit is done now.

Only thing is I must be out of practise as when I converted this to this tensioning system, it took a lot less time. Oh well.

AndersDK · Unread post by **AndersDK** » 17 Jan 2010, 00:45

Hi -

Thats a neat little plumbing you have done there.
I'd expect it to work just great, especailly if you insulate it using bits of foam tubing to insulate the heat exchanger.
3/4" tubing seems to fit exactly.

Also try fill out the gap between the 2 pieces of piping with solder, to get the best possible heat transfer.

You should consider using a slightly smaller diameter in the fuel hosing leading to/fro your heat exchanger, as that would speed up the fuel flow speed and consequently give less time to radiate any heat loss from the heated fuel.
That would help matters where its not practical using insulating foam on the fuel hosing.

Looking forwad to your reports on using this ...

$\:D/$

spider · Unread post by **spider** » 06 Feb 2010, 13:36

Couple of pics anyway as promised.

It does not provide as much warmth as I'd hoped, however its a lot better than nothing.

You can see my replacement filter head too. I have also fitted a non-return valve after the filter as I had a problem a while ago (it was actually air ingress, but I decided to leave the valve there anyway)

It was about the only sensible place to fit this "pipe" as the way the coolant return from the outlet on the top of the thermostat housing runs alongside the bottle and my fuel hose is very nearby

The pipes are soldered together, the cable ties were just something I added incase they decided to vibrate apart.