Gordon, et al.
How does that new battery have enough amps to start the car? The rating is like... 170 CCA. The battery in my car now has something in the order of like 550CCA. Am I thinking about this wrong?
Ted
I've been using the same battery for about 8 years now and it has never faltered.
I'm running something like 8:1 compression and the stock, VW starter has never had trouble spinning it over so I'm pretty confident that the Odyssey will work. Besides - I needed something slim and this was a better solution than a couple of batteries for a Harley Davidson.
Awesome. I purchased the same battery yesterday. I was hoping I hadn't made a boo boo. My motor is running 8.9:1. The starter is really sluggish. I think maybe the battery simply didn't come charged. I really need to buy a volt meter. :|
Thanks for the info!
Basic consideration here: these engines are, if they do not have some serious fault within, easy to start. A little gas down the throat and a couple of turns and you're off. W/ dual carbs, the short manifold from carb to valve helps a lot. Most of these cars start up literally at the touch of the key. I can, and have, started my car by pushing it on level pavement, jumping in and popping the clutch. That was back before I put my headlights on a relay that powers down when the ignition is off. Something that should be standard on all our cars, IMHO.
I believe once upon a time the VW type 1 manual described the procedure for push starting you car. It was quite easy when I was going to college in SF during the 60's. Always park on a hill.
Quite right. My first car and I had to negotiate Pittsburgh for a year, and always park it pointing down hill was SOP.
Love the Burgh, Not like most of the East, hills!
Been trying to get out to the shop and work on the heater, but either it's been way too cold or when it's warm I can't find the time. Been collecting a whole lot of parts, though. Duct tubing, silicone insulation mat, exhaust pipe to make into a 45 degree fitting for the combustion chamber exhaust, rubber feet for the mounting points, a nice little box for the pulse generator....all sorts of stuff. Now, all I need is warmer weather!
This thread has been a real clinic, Gordon. Thanks.
Rubber feet, a nice little box and a pulse generator.
Thank the Lord I know what this thread is all about! 
Gordon, I have a Flux Capasator ....still in the box. I couldn't find the high speed hydrogen eliminator needed to install it. If you want it , it's yours for shipping. Or I can drop it off on my next flight to WM.
Sorry, I'm on vacation and I don't always make sense after 5. Peace out
Supah!
Now I'll have enough power to never have to worry about starting the car.
Enjoy the Coast. It's always five o'clock there, right? Wish we were there......
Gordon, out here, we say, it must be five o'clock some wheres. As we pop the cork or fetch the Hendricks, from the bar!
Cheers!
I don't know, I traded my watch for a beer
Been warm enough to work in the garage, but also warm enough to do yard work and clean up a lot of tree limbs downed by high winds a few weeks back. Life gets in the way of heater futsing.
Made up a 3-D fitment model for the heater (which looks suspiciously like a piece of 4" PVC drain pipe) and got the battery mounted to the forward part of the well.
Final fitment of the heater is going slowly because (a.) it's often cold out there, (b.) the well is tapered inward on each side as it goes down, so I lose space the lower I mount the heater in the well and (c.) there is a 6" tall exhaust pipe on the bottom of the heater that prevents me from setting it in it's final position without drilling a 2-1/2" dia. hole in the bottom of the well. Once that hole is there, you can't move the heater fore/aft/left/right without messing with the hole and THAT's not cool, so I have to do all this by measuring a bazillion times and then cutting (while I pray). Hence, the 3-D model.
That, plus the cold air intake end begins to interfere with the well wall as it gets mounted lower, meaning that I will have to carefully locate a BIG (3-1/2" dia.) hole in the driver's outer side of the well that I'll have to (a.) slip the intake into as I finally mount the heater and (b.) manage to insulate around the inlet as it goes through the wall. That also means that the cold air intake will be getting air from the space between the battery well and the fender liner (and am I glad I put those fender liners in!) so I'll enclose the bottom of that airspace to keep road splash/dust from getting sucked into the heater. It's also far enough away from the heater combustion exhaust to not have to worry about that.
I also moved a portion of the front wiring harness to allow room for the heater air inlet hole in the well wall and discovered that I had an extra wire in the harness (originally meant for a windshield washer pump that will never be installed) so I can use it for a light in the Multi-Gauge to tell me when the glow plug is on (there is also a light in the heater switch to tell me when the heat is on).
I had mentioned earlier that I might be installing a Safecraft RS5 fire suppression system in the well, too. Well, that thing was gonna be about $600 delivered and installed (by me). Decided to install two, 3-foot Blazecut fire suppression tubes, one around the heater bay and another above the engine out back. Much more cost effective for me in the long run and Josh, out at JOGR/Blazecut was great to deal with.
So that's it thus far. Oh, Wait! It's five o'clock, somewhere!
Quick update:
There comes a point in time when you have to stop measuring eight ways to Sunday and....
CUT THE DAMN HOLE!
I did just that - cut the 2-1/2" hole in the bottom of the well with a hole saw for the exhaust pipe. Really exciting, cutting a big hole into your pride and joy, believe me.
Now I know that I have to cut the 3-1/2" hole for the air inlet because the heater is about 1/2" too far to one side and the little air plenum I made for the outlet will have to be adjusted for final dimensions once that move is made.
One big hole done - one even bigger one to go! (but I think I'll just look at it for a day to see if anything else comes to mind as an alternative........You know.)
measure thrice?
Big do-ings at the Five Cent Racing skunk works this week.
Buckled down and cut a 3-1/2" diameter hole in the side of the battery well for the heater air inlet. Pretty nervous, there. Ended up being 1/8" off (down), so I'll relieve the top and just use more insulation around the duct tube.
Got the heater output air plenum mocked up in Kraft paper last week, then had to tweek it a couple of times to get the surface angles right to accept the air duct attachment nipples (think of a floor duct in a home's hot air or A/C system - I have ducts like that, only much smaller). Making this plenum is necessary because 2" 90 degree elbows with the very tight radius I need do not exist - the plenum is by far the easier way to do this.
Once I had everything mocked up, I had to take the kraft paper version apart to use it as a marking template for the metal version. No big deal there, it was just held together with scotch tape! I actually made two complete paper mock-ups....The original, and then another from the modified original to prove out the design.
So I grabbed the #1 paper template, the #2 paper mock up (all taped together in its' final form to show what the finished product should look like), the duct tubing and whatever else I though might be interesting and headed out of state to Woonsocket, Rhode Island (it only took 20 minutes to get there) to an HVAC sheetmetal place I found when dropping off my wife's sewing machine for a cleaning. Greg, at Marcaux Sheetmetal, met with me, saw what I was trying to do and helped by convincing me to abandon the galvanized sheet metal I originally wanted, and go, instead, with plain old cold rolled steel at about 19 gauge. The argument was that, sure....you can weld the galvanized stuff, but it gives off Arsenic gas as it burns - not exactly cool, right? The cold-rolled stuff is thin enough to be shaped easily with hand tools, but stiff enough to hold its shape, PLUS I can weld it with my MIG or TIG welder. So he rummages around out back and comes back with a sheet big enough to make two boxes. Then, we figure out what I'll need for the two duct nipples (based on the ID of the duct tubing) plus two 3-1/8" duct tubes for the inlet and outlet of the heater itself. He pulls out some more sheet the same thickness and makes up all four tubes in about five minutes using some absolutely ancient metal working tools.
It turns out that Greg finds and restores old metal working tools the same as a lot of us find and restore old cars. He cut the metal sheets with a HUGE, 12 foot bed, Pexco metal shear that was dated 1912. When I looked around the shop, none of the tools were newer than 1940 and were GORGEOUS, beautifully restored works of tooling art. He said he recently found a metal press brake (used for making angular bends in metal sheets) in an old mill in Massachusetts that dated back to 1873 and was easily restorable. They used to be really busy providing sheet metal products and services for all of the mills along the Blackstone River Valley, but all of those have now gone elsewhere. They're still busy, but now they're making a lot of stove pipe and stuff for pellet stove use.
Anyway, my four made-up duct pieces plus the sheet of raw metal for the box cost me $20 bucks and I headed for home after telling Greg that I would come back and show him the heater installed. That night, I traced the outline of the template onto the sheet metal with a very fine-tipped pencil. It looked great.
Today I visited the sign-making shop of another motorhead I went to high school with and we used his shear and an X-Y cutter to cut the outline of the box out of the sheet. What started out as something looking like a Kleenex box has become a complicated, trapezoidal design with a lot of angles, making it difficult to cut out - very little of it lines up on the same line with other parts, but we did as much machine cutting as we could to keep everything flat. Now I have that at home to finish up a few spots by hand (using a Dremel and a cut-off wheel) that were too hard for the X-Y table to get at and will drop back over there Monday to use his mini press brake to get some of the long, easy bends started, then finish the rest at home. It's cute - a full press brake with a 16" bed and fully adjustable jaws. One guy can pick it up and walk away. I told them about the 12' bed Pexco I had seen and now they want to go visit Greg.
I actually have pictures of some of this stuff and will post something tomorrow as time permits to make it easier to follow. Hope to get the box fab'd early next week and then move on to the next steps, like finishing the wiring, getting the ducting installed and so forth. Building the box will supremely test my MIG welding skills, but I'm up for this (and I have this spiffy angle grinder to make ugly welds look nicer).
Stay tuned - Pictures at eleven......well, maybe tomorrow morning.
Hi Gordon
Interesting thread.I personally feel sceptical about using something like this as others do, one flame too many, you see some horror stories on the net ...356 replica took thousands of hours to build...destroyed in seconds etc.
However enough about the negatives, off on a tangent here, has anyone tried using a heater matrix like you find on water cooled cars? I remember one in a little MG I had that was real toasty, when the water got warm, similar to the Beetles system but back to front. Couldn't you substitute one of those up front like an additional oil cooler with blower unit on it. It would probably give the oil pump more work and increase the oil capacity...more piping to the front of the car? Anybody got any thoughts on this?
Thought about an oil cooler/cabin heater like that and discarded the idea a couple of years back. You would have to replace the water radiator core with something that can take a LOT more pressure. The water heater core can tolerate about 25-50 pounds of pressure when the water gets hot. The external oil cooler core can see pressure way more than that, upwards of 125 pounds, and can approach 300 pounds on a cold day with thick oil and a full-flowed case. The internal pressure valve takes care of the internal oil cooler, but if you've full-flowed the case then full oil pressure goes out that hose and through the external cooler and filter. If the heater core were to blow, there would be a LOT of oil all over the inside of the car - not cool.
On the one flame too many thing, hundreds of thousands of these heaters are in use every day in tractor trailer sleeper cabs without incident. I'll be having some guys who install sleeper cab heaters take a look at the final installation of mine to make sure it's OK and up to current standards.
Every time I hear the "bomb in your lap (or trunk, or whatever)" thing, I think:
"Do you not realize that there is 10+ gal of highly explosive liquid essentially sitting in your lap, and an engine where 50 small explosions every second occur (and which has the propensity to backfire) sitting right behind you?" It makes me wonder if you guys have furnaces in your house, or if you just get blankets to keep warm all winter. There's a fire in your water heater, cooking range, and maybe even your clothes drier as well. All of them have about 1/10 the safety devices built into them that an Espar heater does.
YEAH!
WHAT STAN SAID!
These heaters, identical to mine, were installed in VW Beetles and Karmann Ghias in the trunk, along the left fender line and about 4" away from the gas tank. In thousands of cars, many of which were not in the "civilized" USA. They seemed to work OK (except for the occasional soft, POOF! coming from some of the larger BN4 and B4 heaters when they started up (they tended to run rich at times).
And let us not forget that wonderful GM product, the Pontiac Fierro.... A forward-thinking, plastic fendered, mid-engine car with LOTS of space in the TWO trunks (front and rear) gained by putting 18 gallons of gasoline in a tank which doubled as the cockpit center console. You rested your arm right on top of the tank while enjoying the drive.
So I promised pictures and here they are:
This is a mock-up of the plenum, the brown box at the left, with the silver, passenger side duct entering the top and a white mock-duct exiting right. The red pad on the far left is a silicone heat-proof mat, suspiciously resembling a heat-proof table trivet from Bed and bath. BTW: That's the final place for the heater, once I get some mounting studs welded to the feet it sits upon.
Here's a close-up of the plenum from the passenger side. In the final form, I angled the box metal a bit in two dimensions to fit the angle of attack of the silver duct better, but made the box a bit harder to fabricate in the process - the woes of custom metalwork! But, making all of these weird angles just pointed me more towards welding the thing together - which should look better (?) than pop rivets.
This is the 3-1/2" hole on the air intake side which ended up being right on front-to-back, but 3/16" off up and down. Oh well....That's what a hole gasket is for, right?
This is what you get when you open up that paper box and flatten it out again.
And here it is transferred to the sheet metal and the metal cut out. Now, all I have to do is go back to the sign place and use their press brake to start/make most of the bends and fold it up. Once that's done, finish the bends with a hand bender (used by aluminum gutter installers) and MIG weld the seams. But before I start burning big holes into this, I'll be practicing (a lot) with the scrap pieces from the original metal sheet. Maybe I'll finally learn how to weld 19 ga. sheet metal!!
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I have very little concern for your safety. I only know of one instance where a heater actually exploded and it was while being worked on. These heaters were standard equipment in many parts of the world where the climate is cold for the most part. As I mentioned before I had a BA6 in a 77 Westy I restored 16 years ago. It worked flawlessly and if anything was too hot. Your install looks great. If any of us ever get in any kind of head on collision it is not the gas that is going to kill you.
On the other hand I did the VS heater vent mod suggested by Kirk. Directly venting the heat exchangers into the vent pipes along the doors and bypassing the frame. I live in a cold climate and even need some heat in the Summer evenings. This is a very cheap mod and works very well once the engine reaches operating temp. That takes about 10 minutes in below freezing temps to get adequate heat. The only downside is the engine noise in the cockpit is increased by at least 20db. I also modified my window curtains to seal the cockpit better. The only cold air coming in is from the mid windshield area and through the handbrake. I actually have to turn the knob down after about 15 minutes. I had a BN2 lined up in case this mod failed. I can refer anyone to my guy in Seattle that restores these heaters as a hobby if interested.
OK, so now that I'm actually seeing light at the end of the heater tunnel, it's now getting warm enough to not need it! Harrumph.....
Snuck in around all of the Grampa things I've been doing this week, I started with the cut-out metal from my template, then re-drew all of the bend lines and hole cut-outs. I also drilled pilot holes for the three holes, just to make sure they were registered where I want them, and then headed out to Sunshine Signs to use one of their press brakes;
At Sunshine, I could at least get all of the major bends started before the box became captive on the press brake (meaning that if you make enough bends across the length of a piece, eventually it curves around to prevent making any more bends - ask me how I discovered this wonderful fact.....). Once a bend is at least started, it will hold that bend point better if you have to finish with hand tools. Here, I've got the major bends done and am bending the tabs on the box sides with a hand bender. The clamps hold it down with those metal brackets to make a sharp crease:
So once all of the major and minor bends are made, the box is beginning to take shape and everything is showing up in the right places. I used that small hand anvil (and lots of tapping) to get the bends nicely creased:
So that got me to the "welding part" 
where I found that I can at least spot weld thin sheet metal to hold it together enough to get it over to Chris so he can weld the seams;
That done, I brought it home, dressed the seam welds, welded in the three tubes (I know...I should have had Chris do it but he's out of town and I (unwisely) own a MIG welder, so..... ) In the end, after a little welding and a LOT of grinding, I ended up with a semi-finished box that needs some sealant around the tube seams (to seal any leaks and dress it up) and paint.
In the next photo, that upper duct hose will get dressed off toward the left - I just used a loop of duct to show how it's going to look. The box fits the oddly-shaped space perfectly with room for some insulating material behind it. Not as cool as compound bends made by machine, but it looks decent, is strong as all get-out and it works (and it has a couple of pounds of weld added and then removed).
Next, is to get it in there and install the other ends of the ducts up behind the dash, get it all wired up and a fuel line in and Test 'er Out!
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Amazing, I am in awe with of the skills y'all have. I just look at my car something breaks.
interesting solution Gord.
i did a slightly different approach:
how are you solving the fuel pump issue? i had to have a separate fuel tank reservoir for the heater after my whole fuel tank slowly drained though the gas heater the night after i installed it. (BAD). i opened the garage door and it was STINKY!
Could you not have installed an electric solenoid switch inline on the fuel line that would only come on when you turned on the heater? Just saying.
Mango: I'm using a current model, Eberspacher Airtronic D2 fuel pump. If you look up higher in this thread I've posted an Eberspacher part number for it. The Thermo King techs tell me it is a non-syphon pump. When it's off, both valves are closed. Be forewarned, it will need a pulse generator circuit to drive it and a new pump is over $200.
My BN2 is (supposedly) sensitive to orientation. Mine is mounted turned 90 degrees from yours. Other than that, they look similar but I've found there were quite a few subtle model changes over the years.
Love your installation details, Mango.
cartech - - it is definitely possible to use a solenoid. i VERY rarely use the heater and i didn't want to be freaked out that that solenoid might leak or give way, so i opted for a mechanical solution that had near zero risks.
Cool project Gord! i'm not on here much, but when i am, i definitely pop in to see how your build is coming along! 
Mango, your right the lower the risk the better You guys are doing nice work... Ray
Yeah, Mango... Last winter it was channeling a pair of ""Roadster" seats when I got tired of my old Speedster seats. The welding was easier on those, but this has been a fun project. Looking forward to toasty, Fall drives.
Always something going on at Five Cent Racing. Just like YOUR shop!
It's been a slow two weeks. Got the plenum finished by grinding off the excess weld, then re-welding any holes and repeat the process a few times - Its funny how you can try to weld a small hole shut and create two more, but that's welding thin sheet metal for ya.
Then.....We took off to Florida for a while for some R&R. It was good to be truly warm for the first time since late September.
Once we got back, all of the welds were ground off and smoothed out and I put on a skim coat of Bondo on all the seams to make sure they're sealed and then sanded THAT off, primed it and painted it a silver metallic, like Tom's Natalie. Looks almost as cool as his car. I found that I have the same affliction for Bondo as I do for welding - Put too much on, then slowly sand most of it off.
Yesterday I added a couple of silicone heat shields between the plenum and the fiberglass body (safety first!) and cut the two holes in the trunk floor up in the corners near the hood hinges to get the heat into the cockpit. Inside of the cockpit they will have a pair of rotating, 45 degree tubing elbows to let you direct the air around in the foot area of the cockpit.
I also got a small box to hold the pulse generator - it looks suspiciously like the box from fancy toothpicks from the grocery, but is a perfect fit (and for $1.38!). All I need is a couple pieces of spongy-stuff in the ends to hold the board in place.
Today, I hope to get the pulse generator boxed and figure out what I need to seal the gap around the air inlet and exhaust pipe and get some bolts welded to the heater mounting feet (because everything fits so close, there is no way to get a wrench near two of the feet, so the bolts will be captive and put the nuts on from below the body).
Getting close, now - - - - Stay tuned.....
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Next step is finding a place for the climate control thermostat - Did I mention I wanted automatic climate control? I found this cute little number on Amazon:
That's a small tape measure - the thermostat is only 2 inches wide and an inch high. It works on 12 volts DC, is amazingly programmable and has a relay output that can handle 5 amps - way more than enough to apply power to the heater drive relay. And all that for $25 bucks, delivered. All I had to figure out were the Chinese symbols for "+" and "-" for the +12V power - Everything written on the back of the unit is in Chinese! Thank you, Google!
Now, I have to find a place under the dash where a digital display doesn't jump out at you as being out-of-place in an Analog world. I'm thinking the space between the key on the steering column and the Stereo (which also has a digital display). A little obscured by the steering wheel spoke, but I can live with that. Besides.......It's supposed to be automatic when it's working - Just turn it on, set it to 70F and drive.
Makes me now wonder, how hard could it possibly be to install an electric cruise control????
Hmmmmmmmmmm..........................
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Gordon, glad to see you're staying old school with the digital automatic climate control.
Millennials would insist on a touchscreen Nest thermostat that learns your preferences automatically as you drive and is controlled from an app on your phone or remotely from the internet.
We do what we can to preserve tradition.
You know me.......
Old school, all the way........burying all that technology behind a false façade.
No autonomous AI cabin control for me.
Next you'll be thinking I could install a Shiatsu massager in my roadster seats.....
Or something.........
I think "Madonna" sang all about this in her old hit "Living in a Digital World"
Gordon,
I think the song was a 'Material Girl' and Rush sang about a 'Digital Man'. In any case, Did you ever consider making a panel that hinges up underneath the dash to hide your control?
Frank C. posted:Gordon,
I think the song was a 'Material Girl' and Rush sang about a 'Digital Man'. In any case, Did you ever consider making a panel that hinges up underneath the dash to hide your control?
OOO, I like that. how about a flat screen that rises up out of the dash?
Nope, after giving this a lot of further thought, I'm going to mount the digital controller somewhere that is nicely visible and handy to the driver, but not too obvious.
That way, when I go to the "German Car Day" at Boston's Museum of Transportation (or the Northeast PCA Concours show) and a Porsche purist asks, with their usual attempt at withering tones, just what that is, I can proudly say "A programmable climate control for my Gas Heater! Something they should have had in the 1950's, for those high prices they were charging."
THAT should piss them off......... 