Home-Built Climate Control
In Mochi Mochi's comment on the AMC Eagle Car Lust post, he* told a pretty entertaining story about his home-built attempts to heat his VW Squareback that I thought deserved its own post.
"The thing I love most about this article is the reference to duct tape and vacuum cleaner hoses to augment the "climate control" of cars. Drivers of air cooled german cars are well aware of the challenges of staying warm - kind of the polar opposite of the situation here. In my years of driving through Boston winters in my 72 VW Type III Squareback I invested a lot of time trying to engineer new and augment the existing heating system. For a while I had a series of what looked like little battery operated hair driers stationed around the interior of the car. They drew power from the cigarette lighter socket. These were incredibly noisy and did almost nothing. Eventually they all either caught fire or arced out and exploded. I carried an ice scraper to scrape the inside of the windows as my breath would condense and freeze on the windscreen. I tried using a mask to warm my face. The mask had a hose built into it to funnel my breath directly to the outside of the car - again to avoid having the windows completely fog and freeze. I looked a little like a cosmonaut from the late 1960's.
"I looked into clear plastic films with heater wires embedded in them that could be stuck to the windows. At one point I considered installing a kerosene heater in the back of the car. But that just seemed a little too dangerous. Now living in the friendly and sunny climes of SoCal the air coolers seem like a happy option. I know that all I have to contend with is cooling during the summer months. And duck tape and vacuum cleaner hoses sound not so bad."
Wow! I know the heaters in air-cooled VWs were pretty poor, but I had no idea they could inspire this much home-brewed ingenuity. This stuff is fascinating.
Eventually they all either caught fire or arced out and exploded.
Now that sounds like a problem.
I tried using a mask to warm my face. The mask had a hose built into it to funnel my breath directly to the outside of the car - again to avoid having the windows completely fog and freeze. I looked a little like a cosmonaut from the late 1960's.
This is incredibly funny - mostly because it actually seems like a pretty logical solution. Mochi, did it work?
I'm a fan of Squarebacks and other air-cooled VWs, but this hilarious list of attempted fixes is pretty damning commentary on VW's engineering at the time. I understand that heating air-cooled cars is tricky, but why do I hear so much about VW's problems and not about contemporary air-cooled Porsches and Corvairs? How did Porsche and Chevrolet solve the heater problem, or were they as bad as VW am I'm just ignorant about it?
* By the way, Mochi, I had to make a call and went with the male pronoun. Given your background, it seems like a solid bet, since most of the women in my life, at least, have entirely too much common sense to like the cars that we do.
--Chris H.
SilentStorm on March 12, 2008 at 11:13 AM
I remember how my mom used to heat up her VW Bug Convertable with a cinder block placed in the oven for some amount of time.
Of course, you're talking nearly 30 years in the past for me, and I'm all of 36+ years old now, so I don't know how long she baked the block or at what temperature. But there was just something about Air-Cooled VW's that required all sorts of ingenuity for moments like this.
Indeed, those WERE the days!
mochi mochi on March 12, 2008 at 09:43 PM
Why did I not think of heating up cinder blocks in the oven!! Had I been a woman I think I would have been a lot smarter.
The mask with breathing hose was successful, but uncomfortable and cold, I had to abandon it. In the end I drove with the windows open a lot. So this required a lot of clothing. I just spent a lot of time being very cold.
The problem with the heating systems for VW air-coolers was that there were these heat exchangers that wrapped parts of the engine and exhaust. These were supposed to be metal ducts that would channel heat to the cabin. There was no electric fan. Somehow a little air was pumped through these exchangers, possibly by the ever rotating engine fan. The air traveled through little ducts in the rocker panels from the back of the car to the front. As you can imagine by the time that hot air got to the front of the car it was pretty cold. There was an electric "defroster" fan, but that only drew cold air from the out side and it did not blow with any force.
The real problem was rust. The heat exchangers would rust and become less efficient with time, develop holes & cracks, or just fall off. Also you needed flexible heat resistant hoses to connect the exchangers from the engine to the car frame... these flimsy hoses would tear, break, and just fall off. Any hole or crack any where in the system would let heat out and cold air in.
I'm not sure how porsche managed. I'm guessing stainless heat exchangers, at least I heard something about this. Possibly they had more expensive and better materials. I don't really know. Perhaps they were really cold, or may be people who could afford porsches could also afford regular maintenance and replacement of their heating systems.
I still want a squareback. I loved that car. I regularly check for them on craigslist. It was a blast to drive and when I set the front end camber to zero with a carpenter's level the thing handled really well. The change from negative camber to zero camber really cut out the excessive understeer. Of course it wasn't super stable in high winds, but it was a fantastically fun and a completely cute car.
Cookie the Dog's Owner on March 13, 2008 at 10:02 AM
IIRC, the Corvair used a gasoline heater, then later switched to a heat-exchange system like VWs.
Zarba on March 24, 2008 at 09:00 AM
I had a '73 Beetle, and the heat exchangers were certainly a weak point. Mostly, this was due to them rusting out from moisture collecting in the exchangers.
However, when mine rusted out, I replaced them with new ones and it made TONS of heat; so much that a cheap plastic radio sitting on the back floor in front of the rear outlet was MELTED by the heat.
When they're working right, they're an ingenious solution. VW did sell auxiliary gasoline heaters for the cars, but I never trusted those.
The real problem I had with the '73 was the frsh air vents in the dash. Covering those with black electrical tape every fall was the cure for cold air blowing in unimpeded.
Still wish I had that car. Absolutely bulletproof, and the build quality was simply amazing for a $2,000 car.