Mike Hammill and Maddy Raven have bought a Beach

[Mike Hammill]

Hi All,

Very pleased to have finally joined the California Owners Club. Camping in Scotland in May finally clinched it for us. Beautiful weather, fantastic scenery, long hours of daylight but a strong wind at times. The need for a quiet, well insulated van with a good blackout was seen to be essential!
So we bought a 2016 Beach from the North Wales main dealer but having a problem - it was supposed to have an auxiliary heater which we assumed was the diesel parking heater. Not so said Sytner's - it is the standard "auxiliary heater - electric". There doesn't actually seem to be one of those either! Can anyone enlighten me please? Sytner's specification list also contained an auto dimming rear view mirror. This was also not present when we picked the vehicle up - Sytner's have agreed to compensate us for this though. Not what I would have expected at all.

 

[kurienp]

Mike, welcome on board . The only compensation you should accept is that they retrofit the diesel heater to your beach. That is what makes it the cozy little place it is meant to be ....

Hi All,

Very pleased to have finally joined the California Owners Club. Camping in Scotland in May finally clinched it for us. Beautiful weather, fantastic scenery, long hours of daylight but a strong wind at times. The need for a quiet, well insulated van with a good blackout was seen to be essential!
So we bought a 2016 Beach from the North Wales main dealer but having a problem - it was supposed to have an auxiliary heater which we assumed was the diesel parking heater. Not so said Sytner's - it is the standard "auxiliary heater - electric". There doesn't actually seem to be one of those either! Can anyone enlighten me please? Sytner's specification list also contained an auto dimming rear view mirror. This was also not present when we picked the vehicle up - Sytner's have agreed to compensate us for this though. Not what I would have expected at all.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

 

[Mike Hammill]

Mike, welcome on board . The only compensation you should accept is that they retrofit the diesel heater to your beach. That is what makes it the cozy little place it is meant to be ....

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

Agreed,! Thank you!

 

[MattBW]

Auxiliary heater may be referring to the coolant heater which warms your van up when the temp is below 6c. Sometimes they can be used with a remote to pre heat the cab too. They can only be used for 30 minutes as they are powered from the engine battery and use the cab fans.

VW have messed around changing the terms for these things which has caused enough confusion over the years. Why they just cant call it coolant heater and parking heater I don't know.

 

[Loz]

Have a look on the build label (under the steering column or inside cover of service book) and see what codes you have.
7VF - Fuel-fired parking heater with radio remote control and electric auxiliary heater

is what we have and it has a remote and warms the air in the rear space.

You will also have 1 or 2 stickers in the drivers door reveal, we have 2 a Webasto one and an Eberspacher one as we also have the engine pre-heater.

 

[parrot2]

Welcome. Hope you get it sorted out to your satisfaction.

 

[Mike Hammill]

Thanks all. Decided the nomenclature in the manual was so vague we had little chance of a cheap resolution so going for a retro-fit of an Eberspacher night heater. Seem to have sorted the Beach out eventually - finally found the hook up circuit breaker - using a mirror and a torch!