California T7 – Continuous Heating Issues

• For me, noticeable warm air only comes from level 10.
  Do you already feel a difference from level 5?
• In continuous mode, can the heater really run all night, or does it still switch off automatically after 180 minutes?
• I honestly assumed that if I set it to the maximum level 10, it would always start — after all, it should be my decision how warm I want it to be inside the car.

sidepod said:

It’s truly staggering just how complicated VW have managed to make the on or off function of the simplest heater in the world.
If it wasn’t so annoying I’d actually give them credit for their ingenuity.

Is there a German phrase for “fixing a problem that doesn’t exist “?

If we keep the van much longer I intend to disconnect the heater form the van and simply fit the Eberspacher controller. At least then the heater will do what I want when I want it to.

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sidepod said:

It’s truly staggering just how complicated VW have managed to make the on or off function of the simplest heater in the world.
If it wasn’t so annoying I’d actually give them credit for their ingenuity.

Is there a German phrase for “fixing a problem that doesn’t exist “?

If we keep the van much longer I intend to disconnect the heater form the van and simply fit the Eberspacher controller. At least then the heater will do what I want when I want it to.

Click to expand...

kaifetzer said:

California T7 – Continuous Heating & Start Issues
Hi everyone,
I’m having some problems with the continuous heating mode:
Tank is full
Hooked up to shore power
Batteries fully charged
Runtime limit from instant heating excluded — not used

Still, the heater sometimes doesn’t start at all — for example, in the afternoon it won’t start, but this morning it did. Could it be because the interior is simply too warm?

It’s honestly frustrating that there’s no thermostat to simply set a temperature and let it regulate automatically — that’s how it works in the Mercedes Marco Polo. ‍

My questions:

• For me, noticeable warm air only comes from level 10.
  Do you already feel a difference from level 5?
• In continuous mode, can the heater really run all night, or does it still switch off automatically after 180 minutes?
• I honestly assumed that if I set it to the maximum level 10, it would always start — after all, it should be my decision how warm I want it to be inside the car.

I’m not happy about it either at the moment.
Has anyone experienced something similar?

Click to expand...

Lakes_Puma said:

I watched the above video and did some testing with my T7 and it seems to be a bit different again from the T6.1

When I used instant heating from the control panel, with temp set to max, after a few seconds a diesel heater kicked in and after a few minutes hot air was coming out from under the kitchen unit, actually quite warm and powerful so much so it was lifting the carpet up.

I then tried the remote control and after a few minutes a diesel heater kicked in and inside the van the heat was coming out of all the normal vents like it does when it does when the engine is running.

I just need to try the constant heating option next.

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Lakes_Puma said:

I then tried the remote control and after a few minutes a diesel heater kicked in and inside the van the heat was coming out of all the normal vents like it does when it does when the engine is running.

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kaifetzer said:

I’ve been testing the heater quite a bit and noticed the following issue:

After start-up the auxiliary air heater runs at full power for a while, but then it already shuts down before it actually overheats. After that it goes into a cycle of switching on and off.

This means that a comfortable temperature on levels 6–8 is never really reached. In practice it’s either briefly very hot (on the higher levels 9–10), or the interior cools down again quickly because the heater regulates down too early.
This behaviour occurs regardless of whether you select instant heating or constant heating – the effect is the same. Other owners have also reported that the heater sometimes delivers only lukewarm air or hardly any noticeable warmth.

To me it looks as if the control logic is intervening too conservatively and shutting the heater down much too early instead of maintaining a stable, comfortable mid-level temperature.

And honestly, with the battery issue still not solved by VW despite software updates, and now this new problem with the heater, I’m starting to wonder what they’ve actually done with this vehicle.

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