At 06:12 PM 9/20/01 -0400, Mark Watts wrote: >Anyone out there convert (or even recomend) the built in gas heater to run >intermitantly off of a second battery?

Yupp.. We take the kids sledding and ice skating in the winter. The westy is great to have available as a warming shelter. To keep from having to run the engine all the time, I switched the gas heater over to the camp-battery set-up. You'll need to really study the Bently diagrams to find where the power needs to go (just to one of the fuses that were added by VW just for the heater, I just can't remember where it is right now) and be sure to watch the voltage of the batt. If the system drops below 10 volts you should shut-down. The carbon build-up on the glow plug gets really bad when the voltage drops.

The only problem is camping. In the '82 the BN-6 is really loud at night. It's like trying to sleep on top of a jet engine, or rocket motor. Plus if anyone is sleeping down-wind they could get gassed-out from the exhaust. When the voltage drops it's even worse. But when we are using TURD as a portable warming hut it's great. Play all day in the frigid air and know that a warm shelter awaits.. life don't get much better than that.

Chris Smith Head Slave