heating with headers? Options

[ottox914]

Planning to go with headers on the 914. I live up in northern WI, and the teener is an auto cross tool, not a daily driver, but for the long drives to the events, SOME heat is needed. Here are a couple ideas I had, anyone have other ideas or refinements?

1) use a sandwich plate oil cooler adapter to get oil flow from the engine, and run an oil line, ( ? what kind of hose or tube) up and back down each side in the rocker area, and use the existing air flow off the fan shroud to provide some flow into the car. With this method, nearly all of the factory system, less the heat exchagers, is intact and working as normal. If Porsche used a "trombone" system to cool the 911's, why can't it work to heat a 914?

2) run oil lines up the right side along the inside of the rocker panel, up under the dash, add a small radiator, wire in a fan on a switch, add a valve in the oil line to turn flow off in july when I don't need it, and have heat this way.

3) find electric blankets at garage sales, and spend 30 bucks for a cigarette lighter converter to 12v and wrap up for the drive over, be a little cool for the event, and wrap up for the drive home.

4) move to a warmer area.

thanks for any ideas or thoughts.

David Parsons
ottox914

[lapuwali]

If you're concerned about heating the windscreen, then I've always thought the "oil cooler as heater matrix" idea had some merit. The chief downsides are the oil takes longer to heat up than water, and the additional cooling capacity may actually be too much in colder temperatures (oil never gets hot enough). Mounting the cooler in a box located in the engine bay, and plumbed into the stock heat tubes in the longs, would require very little hackery to make work. If you were clever with your plumbing, you might even be able to make one or both of the stock flapper boxes work, so you'd not even have to disconnect anything in the summer. The stock heater lever would work. Plumb air in from the cooling fan exactly as the HEs do, or wire up an electric fan.

For personal warmth, go to a motorcycle shop and ask about electric vests. +12V powered lightly quilted vests that can be easily wired into the car's system, and provide enough toasty warmth to allow you to ride a bike at freeway speeds in 40-50 degree weather w/o feeling all that cold. In a car, they'd do an admirable job, probably well into sub-freezing temps.

Of course, I solved the problem by exploiting that last option: I moved from the Midwest to CA years ago...