Understanding and Improving the heater... Options

[Rod]

I have just replaced the heater blower and control panel on my 914 and the front trunk blower now works for the first time The previous owner to me covered over the dash vents with vinyl, so I have uncovered and trimmed around these too.

I have totally stripped out the interior, sorted any rust (er... none ) dynamatted the whole interior, put in extra soundproofing, fibreglassed over and repaired the back pad where the board/wood had perished and fitted a new grey loop carpet set from Appearance and Performance, phew. Looks fabulous and returning to perfect condition

Now as I understand it, the dashboard levers work like this...

1. Top lever

FRESH air vent and fan control

2. Middle Lever

Controls direction of FRESH air delivered by above lever (left footwell, right dashboard.)

3. Bottom Lever

Controls direction of HEAT from 4 below. (Again far left footwell, Right Dash vents)

4. Lever between seats

Controls rear fan and therefore HEAT into cabin.

So the front fan plays no part in heating the car whatsoever, just FRESH air.

HEAT is controlled directly by the lever between the seats (the direction of which is controlled by the 3rd land lowest lever on the control panel)

So, if I am correct with the above can you tell me why hot air only comes from the drivers side? It is really hot air on this side and blown with quite a force, yet the passenger side is cool.. I know there are differences between 73 and 74 cars in that the earlier cars (like mine) have a rear fan that only blows down the drivers side and later cars had a T piece which splits the air from the blower and connects to the passenger side, but is this why it is cold on the ps?? Surely it wasn't that bad from the factory in '73??

Long post sorry, but hopefully concise regarding my problem.. My wife is an Aussie and is complaining that she gets cold, so I'm determined to get more heat on her side if possible.

Cheers (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[r_towle]

Hi,
First to answer your question.
You will need the flapper valve and the pipe that connects that to the heat exchanger. You also will need the j-tube pipe that connects to the other port of the heat exchanger and comes up through the engine tin on the passeger side for the heater blower motor.

The cable that goes to the lever on the floor is one long cable bent in half...so get under there and look harder, it may still be there just sticking up in front of the engine doing nothing.

I live in a very cold climate and I found a few simple things to make the head super hot.
You re right that the top lever controls the fresh air fan and vents.
Leave that to the left.
The next one down, the middle lever controls the mixture of both hot and cold air...so leave that to the left.
The bottom one controls the vents for the heat...
Move that to direct heat.

I took off the hose that connects the fresh air box to the mixer valves on both sides of the car (under the dashboard, in the front trunk)
I took spray can covers and screw clamps and covered these ports, both on the mixer valve and the fresh air box.

This stopped all fresh air from entering the car and the front trunk.
I found the mixer valve seals were not very good and in 20 degrees or lower the cold air was winning the battle.

Now, my car is super hot and I need to open the windows in the winter...I can drive at any temp and be vert toasty warm.

Rich