Thermoking APU; Diesel or Electric?

anything other then a diesel tripack is a wanna be
the only thing that goes wrong is poor service to the unit
it has an inline fuel filter that bad techs kink the line enough to
limit the fuel supply
then the fun begins

 

Thermo king has been pretty good to me. Avoid dealers if you can. They will cost you arm and leg fixing any thing

 

I've inquired about the electric. There are several problems. I dont remember the exact specs, but i did the math in the past. If the AC is on max, the unit only last 9.5 hours drain the batts completely. Now those batts are only designed to be drained to 30% thus you really only get 70% of 9.5 hours. The other problem is charging the suckers. It takes 7+ hours to charge them depending on speed, alternator size and how many times you start and stop the rig. What about the day you only do a short 200 mile run? Also you loose the redundancy from an APU. Most APU can charge you starter batts. Now the electric apu can start your truck as well, but not after a 10 hour break. When you do the real world math the numbers just dont work. (again i dont have the number in front of me, but did all the math in the past)

The batts are also heavier and the btu isnt as high. If your gonna buy an apu, go diesel. I still recommend a diesel bunk heater for winter...which comes with the tripack.

 

Can't beat the diesel tripac with the diesel fired bunk heater IMO. Taking a restart on the road in the truck is a piece of cake, sit there and be comfortable in the truck and run all my toys off the inverter all day long no problem. If I'm parked in an area where I might want to leave the marker lights on for visibility, again, no worries about draining the batteries as the engine will start up to keep them charged.

You can download full service manuals for the tripac (and I mean FULL). Keep it maintained and it'll treat you well. They are powered by a small Yanmar diesel engine which IMO is probably the best small diesel engine manufacturer around, maintained properly they will last forever.

The ONLY thing I don't like about the tripac is I wish that it came with an AC generator head instead of the DC alternator, and ran a built-in charger instead for the batteries. Why? It would eliminate the need for an expensive inverter, could run the block heater, and when at home, you could plug the truck into a 120v socket with an extension cord and keep your batteries topped up and leave all your appliances like the fridge turned on. Also would be nice if shorepower ever becomes really popular. That's the one feature I like about the electric version of the tripac, is the ability to plug into shorepower.

 

if you had an Ac generator head, you'd then have to turn the power back to DC to charge the batteries, making the idea a wash... Removing the rectifier from your alternator gives you 3-phase power lol (im just saying, so nobody jump me. I know its an horrible idea)

you certainly dont want your batteries trying to maintain the factory block heater. The APU would wear itself out in a matter of days trying to keep up w/ a 1500 watt block heater. Besides the fact that if your APU has the arctic package, its already monitoring and maintains coolant temp for the truck, good enough for "most" areas of the country. Thermo King does offer an 300 watt block heater with the Arctic Extreme package, as well as an 800 watt coolant heater. I opted out of that package as it seemed to me like it would beat the APU and batteries to death trying to keep up w/ that electrical demand, while ignoring fuel temps. Which IMO is just as important as block temps.

Xantrex offers an inverter/battery charger combo that runs via household or truck power w/ automatic switching capabilities. Then add a receptacle similar to a block heaters to the truck so you can plug into it easily. My Volvo truck has such a receptacle wired in from the factory. Except mine has a junction block under the bunk which requires user to flip a switch between shore or truck power. The installer at ThermoKing tapped into this junction block to give me 120v power via the Xantrex (Tripac labeled) inverter when they did my APU install.

 

A good diesel apu should be able to maintain 1500 watts for the block heater. you dont need to run your block all week-end, just turn it on 2-6 hours b4 ur ready to go.

 

as usual I could be wrong usually am
but I believe transam tripack had one
water system for both main and apu
keeping the engine warm at all times

 

Now days they recommended you install with separate raid and not tap into main collant line. They can be installed wither way though. The small engine doesn't put out tons of heat which is why the tripack comes with a diesel bunk heater. Collant heating the engion is not supper effective esspecialy in cold climates. If I got an Apu i'd plug my block heater into it to keep the motor warm, although with my engined, fuel temp seems to be more of an ishue then coolant temp.

 

"nowadays"
Transam is installing tripacks the way I described
at the rate of 5 new 680's /week

tripack runs off main fuel supply also