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Electric Heat Conversion


Orangetang

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Maybe this is a poor idea, as I haven't found anything in the forums.... This thought originated as somewhat of a band-aid for my leaking/disconnected heater core, until I have the dash out. That said, maybe it doesn't need to be a band-aid at all.

 

Would it be a waste of time to build a bracket and mount a couple of ~150W heater elements inside the blower motor outlet, wired on a relay to the fan control switch? I don't have AC, and would only ever require just enough heat to keep the windshield from fogging on a chilly morning. Or, even scrap the blower motor altogether and just mount a cab heater under the glove box and duct it into the vent system?

 

How many watts of heat would more than likely be required, and might the physical interference with an already under-powered blower motor even make it feasible?

 

Or, I could suck it up and pull the heater core, but it looks like a disaster to get to, even with the glove box and blower out of the way.

 

Running the Bosch alternator conversion with internal regulator. I'd imagine it has enough jam for this, given I have no stereo or other accessories.

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If you are only really looking to pass inspection (i.e. track car only), and those chilly morning starts are rare then perhaps you can just clamp a pair of 'truck-stop special' 12v hair dryers to the the existing ducts and wire them on a switch.

 

Simple, lightweight, and allows for the removal of everything but the two cowl ducts. Only big drawback is noise and less than stellar performance...

Edited by LanceVance
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And I thought I was red-necking it! It's inspected, the core just went last week and I do drive the car on public roads, so I'd like to have some form of defogger. As funny as I'd like it would be to drive around with hairdryers (not that much unlike MCM's leaf blower supercharger) running in the cabin, I don't think I could tolerate that :)

 

I was thinking more along the lines of a couple of these

 

$_12.JPG

 

As I just realized a normal hairdryer would probably be about the minimum requirement and draws around 1500 W... Maybe not, I'd need 10 of these.

Edited by Orangetang
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Well that was my thought vs the 1500 watt conversion, not feasible. If ~300 watt would do it, I think it could work. Way too busy at work lately to worry about it for now, if I make any headway I'll post some results, but I'm almost feeling a dash pull at this point would make sense. That or, rather than adding a heating element to the heater blower box, just retrofitting an actual cab heater in its place.

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