Kinda philosophical this morning.

For a car with headers and no heat. Can an enclosure be made around an external oil cooler to blow air through it and into the cabin? I think it gets hot enough. Anyone try this?

Cap off the heater tubes in the back, add a front mounted oil cooler with good air flow.
Build an enclosed shroud to exit the air out the top.
Add openings into the shroud to divert some of the air to the heater valves in the cowl area. (Using flexible heater hoses)

That allows you to use the stock dash controls to add hot air to your dash vents.

i think you will build in some stink.

At that rate just put an appropriate sized second oil cooler in a modified fresh air blower housing and use a ball valve or some such to divert flow from the primary cooler as needed. Would only involve two oil lines which would be easier to run than all that ducting. Then the stock fresh air blower fan works to pull air through the cowl and your "heater core".

I am thinking something like this on both sides, mounted in the engine compartment, passenger's side as a secondary cooler to the stock one. I have a header that flows to the driver's side so passenger side has space.

When I want heat, just blow air through the cooler into the cabin through the longs...don't have controls, etc.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Revotec-Oil-Cool...s-/300858528978

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At that rate, you'd lose your fresh air intake, which i'm quite fond of on those balmy CA summer days.

Car is a '70; barely any air as it is; no vents.

Wut? No vents except the ones aimed STRAIGHT at the windshield!


Two or even 3 if you have the center vent. Mine is a '70 as well ...

Negative, simply close the ball valve to divert oil flow to the primary oil cooler. You would then draw fresh air through the same path, but the cooler wouldn't be hot. This is how the heat works on water cooled cars.

I thought about doing this for my 6 conversion but don't forget that it takes 10 to 15 minutes for oil to get to operating temperature.

The basic problem I see with trying to recover the heat from the oil cooler is that the air exiting the cooler is going to be hot when you don’t want heat and not so hot when you do want heat…

Another (and cleaner) option is a high amperage alternator and an electric heater, and/or seat heating pads

Even better - a nice fleece jacket or hoodie...or your nomex jammies if you're a track junkie. Sometimes it's in the 20's when we get to Willow Springs in the morning. That'll wake ya up at 6:30AM.

It can work, but I don't believe it will ever work that well.

--DD

I was waiting for somebody to say this.

Exiting air can go through a diverter valve an

Or maybe, put the fan on the other side and suck air through cooler and into the cabin when needed. Turn the fan off when not needed. Combination of the two and you can suck hot or cool air in. through the longs and into what ever vents system you have.

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When the weather is hot, you have hot oil going through the oil cooler and hot air coming out of the oil cooler which is great for heating. But when it is cold and you need the heat…

Do you actually have a remote oil cooler on your car?

I'm running my oil lines trough the inside of the cabin on the passenger side and i can assure you they radiate A LOT of heat, even in cold weather.

Ok....I"ll touch this since Andy brought it up, and I got flamed on that air con. thread.

Why not use the hot or warm oil with a bypass valve with a copper coil inside the seat.

Forget the air heat transfer from the oil cooler

When you don't want it, bypass the oil coil from the seat to your cooler.

At least your arse will be warm



Glad you are driving more Andy.

I like a warm butt as much as the next guy but what i really miss in my car is warm air to the back of the windshield.

Right now, all i have is fresh outside air. I'd like to be able to use the stock air controls on the dash to direct warm air to the windshield.

I also have a front mounted cooler that produces a lot of hot air.

Seems like an obvious choice to be able to direct that air into the already existing air valves under the cowl.

I think you guys are over-thinking this oil heater thing

1. Adding all the extra equipment (exchanger(s), tubing & hoses, fan, etc.)
2. Adding more expensive oil
3. Increasing the possibility of more locations for leaks


Another option:

For me, adding an electric heater and some minor plumbing into the fresh-air ducting system will give me instant heat with the [already built-in] control-ability for cabin or defrost heat.

In addition, I won't be breathing in fuel and oil fumes from the engine compartment

Of course, I'll need to upgrade my alternator and install some heavy duty conductors to power a heater with enough wattage to do the trick (already purchased the alternator from Pete (pnewman). I understand that McMark is working on another alternator option as well ...

You might also be bothered by the gurgling sound of the hot oil as it moves through the cooler and its lines. On my 3.2 powered Vanagon Syncro , the front mounted oil cooler sits right in the upper grille which is about the same distance from (914) driver to the cowl and fresh air inlet.
The noise takes some getting used to

No, my 914/4 hasn’t. It runs just fine without an extra oil cooler. But after 4 MGBs and a Jensen Healey I have quite a few years and miles of experience with front mounted oil coolers in all kinds of weather. I would have thought that /6s would mount their oil thermostats and oil returns around the engine bay. I didn’t think that they would cycle the oil all the way to the front of the car and then right back when it was too cold to go through the cooler…

My thermostat is in the back near the engine. Not sure what your point is though.

For any sort of heat exchanger to work reasonably well the engine has to be at operating temperature.

If you have an oil cooler making noise, there is something wrong.
There is not supposed to be ANY air moving through the system once it has been purged.

I have dual fron mounted oil coolers under the headlights.
They intake through the fog light grilles, and exhaust to the wheel wells.
If you routed that air up to the windshield vents you would have heat and defrost.

However routing vents to the dash with that configuration would be hard to get past the gas tank.

I've utilized the the hot oil bottom of the engine for heat & defrost , I pump it thru
Dry Sump pump to the front , thru a thermostat bypass valve, to an oil cooler , I have a ball valve
with the handle part of it under the dash , if I close it , the oil is forced thru A/C heater
core ,then back to the oil tank in the engine compartment, I mostly wanted it for a
defrost system , the heater part is a bonus , I've used it in 50* weather it worked
good , I've also had to use it in 40* weather and it struggled to keep the cabin warm,
here's a few pic's , Bill D.

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I tried several iterations of electric heat with limited success. Found 12V heat elements on e-bay that were about 2x3x3/4, and best outcome was the ability to raise the ambient air temp by maybe 20 degrees, with significant current draw. Its somewhere in my thread on #770. Not sure if I took pics of V3, which had two of the elements sandwiched together in a housing. This with a slow fan speed gave the best results, but just barely warm.

If you are running a /6 you have all kinds of air (foam) running through the system to the cooler, it's a dry sump.

Yes, a wet sump like in a /4 shouldn't have air as that would be bad.
But Marty's syncro is far from a stock 4 banger.

We use the coolant version here in the French Alps but the air ones could do the trick

http://www.webasto.com/us/markets-products...ir-top-2000-st/

How long does it take the oil to warm up enough to defog your windshield? I'm thinking quite a while...

--DD

Personally the oil cooler and electric heaters are a waste of time, as this has all been tried before since the 60's. Nothing said here is anything innovative.

If oil heating was a viable option VW and Porsche would have done it, nothing at this point beats heat exchangers and/or a gas heater.

Marty's is a 6

With a large enough alternator, a higher wattage heater is still feasible. This one is around $370. : 600 watt Electric Heater

One of my 911s came with a Webasto gas heater. Did VW or Porsche ever offer them as an option in 914s?

Yes ...
http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=8825

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...&hl=webasto

Sir Andy beat me!!

600 W electric heater putting out 10,000 BTU's? I don't remember all of my science but I thought that would come out to something like 3,000 W to get 10,000 BTU?