Anybody else have a petrol Webasto?
 

Hello all,

I just bought a very clean 2002 530i in Southern Germany with sport suspension and manual gearbox. It's great fun to drive and a real stealthy speed machine. The local gendarmes now know me by name. I'm posting here in E53 because I know so many of them came with Webastos.

My 530i came with a Webasto and an apparently factory original BMW remote control. I found pics on the web of where the Webasto is installed on an E39.

The big question I have is: how does it work? The manual is all in German and my German is functional at best, not good enough to suss out technical instructions. The remote has on and off buttons. Once we get cold weather I plan to try out the buttons. But I wonder too about the safety of a petrol-burning Webasto. Our X5s both have Webastos but they are diesel. It seems to me that petrol is a bit riskier, to say the least, in a small burner tucked up under the back of the wing.

I suspect that the system is working in automatic mode. We did have one very cold morning already and I felt hot air come out of the dash within two minutes, so I suspect that the Webasto came on automatically like it does on our X5s.

Does anybody else have a petrol BMW with a Webasto on it? Any information to share?

I did a lot of research on the Webasto heaters when I was sorting out my remote and I was surprised to see the petrol version even existed. Like you, I thought that safety concerns would exclude petrol-burning options in a heater like this but it seems not. Looking on the Webasto website, at technical data etc., it seems the Thermotop C units (from which the BMW-specific Thermotop Z is derived) are available in both petrol and diesel versions.

You won't have to wait for a cold day to test it. Just hit On and see what happens. Maybe from a distance..... :-)

I had something like it on my VW 411 LE back in the 70's. Man that thing could heat up the car in no time!

There's always one...but you're correct and those are my exact thoughts. On the bright side, given that it'll burn petrol it shouldn't smoke like the Webastos on our X5s. Here is a vid of one on a E39 525d https://youtu.be/BwA99gw4CLg

I used to carry the E70's Webasto remote in my willy warmer. One evening its button got pushed, apparently, whilst I was in the salon above the garage, and the signal carried right thru the floor! The Webasto ran for at least an hour and smoked up the entire garage, even sucking its own exhaust into the interior of the car. It's just dumb luck that I went down to the garage before hitting the sack.

Interesting your Webastos smoke - can't say I've ever seen anything from the exhaust on mine. Different diesel formula here maybe...

Re. accidentally starting it...Yikes.., good thing you noticed. On the E53, the Webasto will only run for 30 minutes, regardless of how it started. Hard coded somewhere. If I start it with the remote, then 15 mins later start the car (Webasto still running) the heater will shutdown once engine coolant reaches 75Deg.C but orange light on MID continues to flash until exactly 30 mins after I hit remote start button.

Petrol webastos are not an unicorn ;) I also own one...

I would suggest: contact the bmw customer service, they will send you a pdf version of the manual or order one at your local dealer: part number should be 01420156408 for the french one - should be around 50 €

Operation via remote: press ON for about 2 seconds and it will start (LED will light and then start to blink as long as the heater is working. If it only blinks about 3 or 4 times and turns off the remote couldn't connect to your car (distance too long, ...)
To turn it off, simply press OFF for about 2 seconds :)

Operation via MID or Navigation is also possible (via timer), which one do you have?

Reason for the smoke is that it wasn't started for a while probably?