Guru
Joined: 15/07/2006
Location: AustraliaPosts: 676
| Posted: 05:43am 06 Aug 2007 |
The first issue to tackle is the heating for demisting.
Just a little searching and it was suggested by several that a bar heater element could be cut down to work off a lower voltage. My childhood days says that glowing red hot thing is dangerous to put inside a plastic box under the dash. All I could see was 'FIRE'.
Others use ceramic heaters and there are commercial heaters that look identical to the original water heater element. Hair dryers have been used, modified for the appropriate voltage and plumbed into the air ducting.
My idea was to have something simple enough to avoid the lengthy job of removing the dash in future vehicles. The 12v plastic hot jugs posed a good idea. In the jug the water could reach 80 degrees C and with the air flow passed the element under the dash, this should be a nice warming effect.
So I stripped the dash (yet again) to check just exactly how all things work.
Initial experiments had only one 12v element. In the final arrangement as seen in the vehicle, 2 of these 12v elements were fitted, to bring the temperature up quicker. The pump is needed because the heat tranfer is not quick enough through just water. It works well, but while I own the vehicle, it probably will never get switched on.
Trev @ drivebynature.com