Another heating opportunity

I came across another option today to get heat from the rear to the front. We all seem to realize that the old or standard style hot air routing involves utilizing the frame channels to get heat up to the front. The thing is though, those channels are cold steel and cool the air considerably along it's length. Dr. Clock has a good idea to route the air into the tunnel area and it's a good option but you won't get defrost and you have to cut and weld into the tunnel. I found a flat area below the door jambs in the glass body. Just below your elbow or beside your hip just inside the doors. A quick cut through the carpet and a 2" hole saw got me through to the front of the rear wheel well. I installed a couple of aircraft type aluminum bulkhead flanges and fitted more 2" SCAT tubing/hose to join over to the existing tubing/hose coming from the heat source. Plenty of hot air comes through this short run but still no defrost.

Hi David,

Did you mean you run it through the doors ? Any pictures ?

I'M still awaiting the bypass tubes from Fibersteel.

Chuck

Giday, Chuck. Here's a pic of the passenger side outlet. 2" dia. Total cost of conversion was about $30 and an hour's work. Just curious...what do bypass tubes do ? How do they work ?

Thanks for your prompt reply David. As stated I actually haven't received them yet, but as I understand it they go directly from the heater boxes and bypass the frame and connect to the flexable tubing that runs along the underside of the doors. My VS Speedster provides some heat however the JPS Coupe has absoutely none. I'm hoping that the bypass tubes may provide just a little.

This is a little like the heat outlets under a Beetle back seat.

Those were opened and closed by the second lever next to the emergency brake

It would be really slick if we could do that here.

Neat, new idea David. Where did you get the aircraft type aluminum bulkhead flanges?

Michael...isn't that the purpose of the levers beside the emergency brake on most Speedsters? I've got them on mine and they were used to open or close the flap on the front end of the heater boxes. It would work perfectly. Bruce....I got the flanges from Aircraft Spruce http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/appages/ductflanges.php

David, on a Beetle one lever controls the flaps on the heater boxes back on the engine. The other lever opens and closes heat outlets under the back seat in the footwell.

David,

Didn

And you worked the "defrosters" by closing the aforementioned "back seat" lever to get as much airflow as possible to the front, then deftly moved your left foot to close the heater slidey-door-thingie down by your foot (or quickly leaned waaaaaay over to get the passenger side with your right hand while still pretending to steer with the left, even though your head was now below the windshield). This directed the "heat" (gently moving cold air, really) solely to the windshield where it would cause about a 1" high strip of the windshield frost to change color while still being translucent, never actually melting anything.

Still, it helped to augment the action of your windshield frost scraper on the inside of the windshield, usually necessary about every 90 seconds, more often at lower speeds.

Ahhhhh, the days of VW's "basic transportation"!

Of course, in the summer, you pulled off the flex tubes from the fan shroud to the heater boxes to keep all that heat, which you now could not stop, from getting into the cabin.

Good memory Gordon and nice description!

Thanks for that excellent heater lead, Peter. I'm liking PN50616-VUZ and it's only $249.

Great link to the flanges. Ive been looking at shop dust collection bits and pieces for the same kind of thing in order sto install my gas heater. Now... if only they have the correct size.

Thats a clean looking install. nice work.

I like David Stroud's simple and effective method, I'll do this on the speedy I have in the shop now.... Thanks !

The "thru" part of the flange is a bit shorter than you'd like as it has to go through the carpet and on my car about 3/8" of glass so I added an inner sleeve of thin wall aluminum to get a better grip for the hose clamp. That's why you see the end of a rivet just inside. A cleaner install could be done with attaching the sleeve to the flange with JB weld and you could eliminate the unsightly rivet.

Another option for the tube would be an 2" round aluminum gutter drop tube that is normally inserted into a house gutter to accept a downspout ( .99 )

I wouldn't have got that one, Doc. Up hear all gutter fittings are rectangular. Sheesh, go for it.

Hi David,

That looks like a good choice as well. I found a picture of it online and my one concern would be the height of the unit. If it needs to mount as orientated in the picture I think it will be to tall to fit under the dash. http://www.summitracing.com/parts/VTA-50616-VUZ/ . Unfortunately this photo doesn

That's a nice unit you have, Peter. I checked the Vintageair site and the dimensions of the unit I'm looking at are 10" x 9 1/8" x 5 3/4" and I can't see why you couldn't install it laying down. If the inlet/outlet tubes were horizontal pointing toward the firewall it would also get the defrost outlets more or less facing up and to each side. I'll mock up a cardboard box over the weekend and see how it looks. There isn't much room to play with.

Neat and very easy to plum in. You can use a bus defrost blower to pick up the cab air and do the defrost with that. Wont be great but interior air blowing on the windshield is bound to help.

Gutter aluminum round drop tube from ACE Hardware, $.76 each, primed and painted then satin black, cut in with a hole saw and installed with three pop rivets in each flange. Total time 30 minutes. BTW they are the exact diameter as the heater box outets.
It would also be easy to lightly sand off their paint and polish the lip too.