Bmw X5 E53 3.0D Auxiliary Heater
 

Hello everyone, let me introduce myself, I'am Alperen, 21 years old living in France, and I have a beautiful Bmw X5 E53 3.0D from 2004 since the beginning of 2018.



It's a nice car, not very sportive but comfortable but the thing is yesterday I spotted something with my auxiliary heater know as the Thermo Top or webasto, let me explain.


The wheater is very nice here more than 20 degree celsius, after a small ride in the town (5km) I came back home and open the hood and noticed that the auxiliary heater is hot.


So I checked this morning with a cold engine, there is no smoke coming from the separate exhaust but the webasto was getting hot while engine running, and some of the hoses were shaking, so here my question is it normal ? Because I read somewhere that the webasto is working only under 6 degree celsius.


Here is a link to Google Drive where i recorded it :



https://drive.google.com/file/d/12sL...ew?usp=sharing



So if someone can help me, I will appreciate. Thanks

It's normal. Webasto heater is installed inline with heater matrix. So all coolant going to heater core flows thru Webasto.

https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/sho...diagId=64_1413

I appreciate, I had my head confused before seeing your message guessing it was anormal. Thanks :)

Yeh it depends if you talking about the aux cabin heater or the aux coolant heater. The Webasto heater in the 3.0d (UK model at least, but I assume it’s all Northern Europe models) is there to help the engine warm up quickly and there more get into its most efficient running state quickly. Eg. My car will go from cold to hot coolant within 2-3 miles. Don’t see any smoke from the exhaust ever though even on a cold day. I can smell the exhaust fumes on that side though on a cold day

You can tell which heater you have, if you have a auxiliary cabin heater you will have a little fob that you can turn it on when the car is parked up.

Every E53 3.0d has a Webasto from the factory. In every case it works as aux heater when engine is running and outside temp is <5 C. With optional pre-heating you can pre-heat the interior. Activation with a remote or via MID or nav screen. This option can be easily coded afterwards. From the factory that pre-heating just warms up the interior. There is a change over valve which bypasses engine. This also can be coded so that the engine warms up too when pre-heater is activated.

Well, I have the Auxiliary Ventilation option on the nav screen with a "fan" sign which turn red when programmed to worked, so I suppose that it's programmable only for the vent heating of the cabin and not the coolant. However it also worked when it's cold outside to heat the coolant toget a warm engine asap as I hear it and see smoke coming from it's own exhaust pipe under the driver side. So it worked as @clavurion and you said.

So if I understand well, everything is normal with my webasto so it's fine :)

Mine hasn't got the parking heating option (no valve to bypass the engine) so when I use my (after-market) remote fob to start the Webasto (when parked up, engine off/cold) it heats both engine and cabin.

And just keep this on thread, yep, the Webasto gets hot even when not running due to engine coolant always running through it.

Yeah, that's what I wanted to know. Thank you