| 3" Bilge Blower |
| Aircooled Volkswagen's are well known for their inherent lack of heat. With the bus being the largest of the aircooled VW's, this is an issue that presents problems for many drivers. Most of the components in Gretta's heating system were in fairly decent working order. With a little bit of cleaning and adjustment they were ready to start doing their job again. Unfortunately the salty roads from too many harsh Northeast winters had long ago eaten away the main heat tube that carries heat to the front cabin from the heat exchangers. Lacking the luxury of a MIG welder, I decided to fabricate a new main tube from 2" PVC tubing. It is cheap, tough and readily available at any home improvement center. I have heard of some concerns with off-gassing resulting from running heated air through PVC pipes, but I have not had any notoceable fumes or other negative effects from the system. I purchased an 8' section of tubing and some tapered rubber plumbing fittings that would allow me to install everything without any drilling or major retrofitting into the stock tube location. With this in place and everything tested for a tight fit, I went for a 30 minute drive. The flow of heat at cruising speed was actually not that bad, enough to keep the windshield defrosted and to keep your fingertips from being frostbitten if you put them over the dash vents once in a while. At idle the stock heater fan in the engine compartment just didn't have the kind of output that I was looking for. The time had come to install a bilge blower to move some hot air up front to the passenger compartment. |
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| The actual install of the bilge blower took me about 30 minutes. I used a reciprocating saw to cut through the main tube and removed about 1" more material than the actual fan body required. Next I slipped the rubber collars in place and tigtened up all the hose clamps. I then added a few zip ties to make sure that the tube and the fan wouldn't be able to fall off if anything should work its way loose. An added side benefit of installing the blower in this manner is that the rubber mounts help to isolate the vibrations from the fan and make for a much quieter fan system. The wiring for the blower couldn't be much simpler. The black wire goes to any solid ground on the frame. The red wire runs up to a toggle switch mounted on the dash and into a fused link into an aftermarket accessories fuse box I added to power my radio and fog lights. I will probably put a rheostat (dimmer) switch on it at some point so the fan output will be fully adjustable, but for now I am happy with the results. My current heat output on a 32 degree day after a 15 minute drive is about 130 degrees out the defroster vents. Adding a bilge blower to the factory heat system will not actually create any more heat, what it will do is get all the available heat to the front of your bus at a rapid pace and will blow it out of the heat vents at a pace somewhat like a hair dryer set on low. Not a bad improvement for under $50.00 if you ask me. |