Another Espar D5 Install

[GDahlbeck]

Last Saturday a friend and I installed an Espar D5 Hydronic heater in my 2006 Dodge 2500. There have been a couple of very good recaps provided by members who have installed these so I won’t go over the whole thing but I will provide a few comments. During my research I called the folks at Espar three times and based on their knowledge and willingness to answer all my questions I would recommend their product. Orders can’t be placed directly with Espar however, and any purchase of equipment or parts must be made through their dealer network. I called a few dealers listed on their directory and ordered from a dealer here in Pennsylvania based on his helpfulness over the phone. The unit cost $1126 and I got it in about a week. The kit for the dodge is very good and the installation was not difficult. The two of us completed it in 6 hours. There are two sets of instructions that come with the kit. One is non-vehicle specific produced solely by Espar. The other set of instructions is specific to the Dodge and as I understand it Dodge and Espar jointly produced these. The Dodge specific instructions contain no text rather they are all pictograms, which is a format that Dodge apparently uses in their service manuals. And while the drawings walk you though the basic installation they are really not that informative. There is a lot of very good information in the Espar generic instructions that are not in the dodge specific ones (like how to prime the pump for the first time) and I’d recommend reading them thoroughly first. After reading the accounts of a few installations we decided to remove the bed to access the top of the fuel tank rather than drop the tank. We used a forklift but the bed only weighs 323 pounds so there are a lot of ways to do this. Removing the bed was very easy to do and it made tapping into the fuel line a piece of cake. To remove the bed we removed and disconnected the taillights, disconnected the fuel filler neck, disconnected the grounding strap, and removed the 6 bolts that hold the bed on. We put a piece of cardboard between the bed and the cab and another one between the rear of the bed and the bumper to prevent scratching the paint. We lifted it by connecting to the tie downs in the four corners. After installing the heater we were able to run the system and check for leaks while the bed was off. The heater unit fits very nicely in the empty bracket on the inside of the frame but we did have to tap one of the holes on the frame and we also tapped the holes on the bracket that came on the Espar unit. We pulled the electrical wires through the rubber grommet directly above the parking brake. There is a large bundle of wires that runs through there so we were very careful when we poked through the grommet but there was plenty of room for the Espar wires. When we finished the installation we could not get the unit to run and after a call to Espar I learned that the tube that extends down into the fuel tank from the return line does not go all the way to the bottom of the tank. This heater kit gets its fuel from the return side of the fuel system so for the Espar to be able to draw fuel the fuel level in the truck cannot be real low. The best I can tell is that the fuel tank must be more than 1/3 full. The Dodge kit ships with the mini-timer, which works great, but does not show any diagnostic codes. The 7-day timer does show diagnostic codes but does not work on the Dodge. There is a separate code reader that can be purchased for about $250. I’ve been using the system for a few days now and it’s great.