So with the onset of winter, and following a freezing trip over the hills between Whitfield and Mansfield I decided to refit the heater to my K. This is the under-bonnet unit, which is basically a heater core and an air flap in a big steel box. This is what it looked like after I plucked it out of a box of junk in the garage:
I pulled it apart, cleaned it and gave it a nice fresh coat of gloss enamel, and it looks awesome now. Surprisingly the heater core was in really good nick, so I got lucky there.
Next came the plumbing. Off to Clarks for some heater hose, and a length of 80mm air duct to feed the warm air to the inlet in the firewall. Heater hose was easy, but 80mm air duct is impossible to find. More on that a little later.
Last time the engine was out the bottom hose looked to have been replaced with one without the heater outlet -- bugger, that promised to be a sod of a job getting the radiator out and back in to replace the hose. Sourced a pair of hoses from minis.com.au, and spent an afternoon skinning my knuckles getting the radiator out, and what do I find? The bottom hose already had a heater outlet, but had been fitted upside-down. #$@*!^&* !!
Next challenge was a missing cylinder head outlet pipe. Someone (thanks whoever you were!) pointed me to Mini King and $3 later that was sorted. While on the phone I asked them if they had the 80mm duct for this heater, a few minutes later they confirmed that yep, they've got some NOS but it's exxy, $56 for the length.. it's only 30cm long ferchrissake. Anyway, gotta have it, can't find it anywhere else so yep, chuck it in the post.
Couple of days later the box showed up, and it's huge -- turns out they've sent me 100mm Clubbie ducting (the stuff under the wheel arch), which is no good to me. @#$&^*#$@&*!!
So at this point I've got everything ready to go, but no way to get the hot air into the car. Googling for ducting was no help, all it was returning was PC stuff. Wait a minute... this looks promising!
80mm mylar ducting with spring steel ribbing, and flanges either end to accept standard 80mm 12V PC case fans. There's an idea..
So, I bought two lengths, removed the flanges from one end and sandwiched a high-capacity 80mm case fan between the two ducts. A $5 variable-speed fan controller and a toggle switch completed the setup, now I've got variable fan-assisted heating / fresh air
