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Hi, I bought my FiberFab-based TDR about 3 months ago and just got it back from the mechanic, where everything mechanical has been renovated. Now it’s in my own garage to redo the dash and the seating. Because I’m 6′-4″, I have an issue with headroom and with being waaaay too close to the steering wheel. The original builder must have been about 4′-6″ because everything was moved forward and upward, and he failed to install a reclining seatback as per the instructions. I need to reconfigure the seats to get me lower and to put in a reclining seatback, which should solve my problems. With that in mind, I spent the day building new seat bases. Figure that the bottom back of the new seat bases is about 2-1/2″ off the floor, whereas the fiberglass originals were at 4″ but jacked up another 2″ beyond that by the builder. I’ve got the right height now, but that gave me a new problem with the VW heater that I have to solve before I start cutting out a new seatback.
The original builder ended the heater tubes at the passenger compartment; i.e., he failed to run the tubes under the seat as per original instructions. I was going to get new tubes and run the tubes under my new seat bases, but it would be nearly impossible to run the tubes under the seat bases due to (a) the “lowness” of the new seat bases, and (b) the proximity to the back of the passenger compartment. In other words, the hose would have to enter the compartment, go down 90 degrees, then turn 90 degrees forward and be squashed to go under the seat. In addition, that would likely either require limiting seatback travel or making a cutout for the tube — neither of which is practical. I guess I could move the entire seat base forward, but moving it far enough forward to make a difference would then leave me too close to the pedals and in a weird driving position. I could just leave the tubes at the edge of the passenger compartment as they were when I got the car, but that would be a waste since all the heat would be blocked by the seat (BTW, when I got the car, the heater wasn’t working anyway).Because I live in Las Vegas, a heater isn’t that big a priority. We have our cold days but most of the time I’ll be driving, temps would be at least in the 50s or higher (or MUCH higher!). I’m already putting in seat heaters and thought perhaps a firewall-mounted electric unit might provide enough floor heat for us in this tiny vehicle. By avoiding the heater tube issue, it should also allow for a more comfortable seat. That, however, still isn’t my question.My question is: What do I do with the old VW heater? Do I take it out and put in J-tubes, or do I just remove the heater tubes (for the sake of neatness) and leave it alone? Or do I connect the tubes to the passenger compartment and just make sure the heat to the passenger compartment is “off” (otherwise it would conceivably overheat the back of the seat). What concerns me the most is the engine heating issue. I’m running a Weber progressive center-mount carb and have heard that this particular setup is finicky about heating. I’m also concerned about whether leaving the heater in place without connections might result in the engine fan just sucking in hot air and blowing it across the engine — a definite issue in the summer in Las Vegas.johnsimion 2015-01-29 02:01:43 Several issues/questions here.
First, you can retain cockpit heat if you can fab up an adapter that will fit underneath your seat bases yet still has roughly the same cross-sectio (area of the opening). For example, it could be a rectangle 1″ high and 8″ wide, or 2″ high by 4″ wide.
To disconnect heat, the easiest/simplest thing to do is to simply remove the tubes that connect the factory heater boxes to the rear firewall of the body tub. Leave the heater controls in place and heat turned off – you do not want hot air coming out of the heater boxes, getting sucked into the engine’s cooling fan, and being recirculated.
You can remove the flexible hose/tube on each side of engine’s fan focusing that go down to the heater boxes, but you must plug the outlets on the fan housing. Freeze out plugs work well for this. Do not try to operate it without plugging those outlets. You’ll lose too much cooling airflow and engine will overheat.
For a cleaner look, you can replace the fan housing with what’s commonly called a doghouse style that doesn’t have the two formed outlets. Should you go that route, post back for further discussion about which housing to get, and how to correctly do it to retain as much of the factory cooling provisions as possible.
There is no need to replace the heater boxes with J tubes. You could, and perhaps get a slight performance increase (on a stock engine), but sealing up the airflow around J tubes then becomes a challenge. It can be done – high performance engine builders do it all the time to get the improved exhaust flow of J tubes. Recommend you don’t even try with a stock engine. Do not go to J tubes without addressing this sealing of the airflow or the engine will overheat.
Carb preheat has nothing to do with the engine cooling fan system. It is provided by small tubular runners that go from each engine head, just above the exhaust port, and run up to connect to the intake manifold near the base of the carb. Again, we can have a separate discussion about that – but it has no impact on your decision about cockpit heat or engine cooling.
Hope this helps…
Early FF TDr on 69 VW pan
Slowly coming back from the ashes...If you want to use the heater boxes and have a lowered seat you can do like they do on the Gazelle kit. They run a fiberglass duct down the sides of the body inside the cabin like the beetle did. It exits up front near the front firewall. Just another thought to chew on.
Allen Caron
VW based 53MGTD - "MoneyPenny"
"If one thing matters, everything matters" - from the book The ShackFrom what I’ve seen of my heat hoses they’re partially crushed where they go under the seat, yet still adequate heat flow when on.
My seat back has a 4 or 5 notch adjustable recline bars attached at the top but only the last 2 are usable. I was thinking the seat back needs to be mounted higher for it to have more possible angles.Don’t know if your steering wheel is away from the dash like mine. I found drawings in the plans (via Download Manuals link) which show the same kind of steering column with ignition key on right side. They show that about flush with the dash and mine is outward from the dash by at least two inches, maybe more.The drawings also show a connecting piece between column and steering box, so I was thinking it could probably be cut and welded shorter. However, from the looks of things that part might be on the driver side of firewall instead of totally outside. I still need to look for that to know for sure. Would be a fairly easy solution for getting that steering wheel away from the drivers seat.From what I can see of my seat back, the lower portion is against the wall behind the seat so I can’t get that set farther away than it is now unless I were to cut that wall out somehow.The heater didn’t heat well so why worry about it . Buy a power inverter and a small heater hide them under the seat or dash . The 1st year I owned my car I put a plug in sterio behind the seat that plugged into a inverter and enjoyed my music. Just my 2 cents .
LRH, I have found that EVERYTHING on my car has to be totally custom fitted. The original builder of my car didn’t follow the instructions, and now I’m kind of doing the seat my own way.
About the seatback, it’s all about where the hinges go. I wanted to attach the hinges at the package shelf level because it looked easy. However, this would have been a problem because if you leaned the seatback backwards from that point, the bottom of the seatback would necessarily move forwards, meaning the seat bottom would also have to move forward, thus creating a ridiculous driving position. OTOH, if you moved the seatbottom backwards where it belongs, the seatback would then be too upright and thus move you too close to the steering wheel. So, it was Catch-22 and hinging the seatback on the package shelf was not viable. Believe me, I kept experimenting with this and making drawings for weeks before I ever made a single cut.I solved this problem as follows: On my car there is a “step down” from the package shelf area that is about 4″ or 5″ lower than the package shelf. This area has a flat SEMI-horizontal area that is about 3″ wide. I cut a 2×4 to fit in the area and bolted it to this “step down” area, then mounted the seatback on hinges that attach to the 2×4. This allows the seat to recline far enough for me, while still allowing it to be brought more upright in case someone wants to be closer. It is hard to judge exactly how close I’ll be to the steering wheel because I don’t have the upholstery in yet, but I’m far enough away that a couple of inches of foam should actually make things better, and I’m 6′-4″.I found that the problem with this is not the setup but how you attach the seatback. It is VERY difficult to put the hinge screws into the 2×4 because the seatback is leaning back over the screws. Remember that the 2×4 fits into the “flat SEMI-horizontal area”? Well, fitting the 2×4 into this area seemed to take days because the area really is not horizontal, it’s SEMI-horizontal, and it leans forward. Leaning the screws forward takes them from “difficult” to install to full-on “impossible.” I had to cut (grind) an angle into the bottom of the 2×4 so that it was TRULY horizontal or even leaning backwards a little. You think, “So what” but this is important because you are trying to screw on a seatback that is trying to lean backwards over screws that are leaning forwards. Good luck with that! Oh, did I mention that the part below the “step-down” isn’t really vertical, either? That meant that the seatback couldn’t be held fully upright, either! To put the screws in, you need to be able to attain a 90 degree angle on the hinge! Well, my rotary grinder with a rough sanding pad was my best friend, next of course, to Mr. Murphy, who always is with me in my garage. With much cutting, fitting, grinding, and primal screaming, I finally got the seatback to where it could be held upright and achieve the magical 90 degree angle for the hinge. This together with a long screwdriver, pre-driving the screwholes, a lot of soap on the screw threads, and infinite patience (as well as throwing a lot of things in the garage) allowed me to finally screw the seatback into the proper position. Ironically, once it’s finally been screwed into position, it’s perfect and there is no further problem and you can use the recliners from MG Magic just as if you haven’t just spent the last 3 days grinding, fitting, and screaming at your car.As for the steering wheel, my mechanic found a way to move the wheel closer to the dashboard. He said there is an adjustment farther forward. This gained an inch or two and also improves the appearance.Regrettably my car is in the shop for wiring the dashboard and is likely to remain there for a couple more weeks. When I have it back, I’ll be able to send you some pictures. In fact, I am eagerly anticipating the day when I have the car back from the body shop and upholsterer and can have a regular photo shoot. A friend told me that the most useful tool for working on these cars is patience, and unfortunatel he is right.Sorry Greg, I strongly disagree with your advice. In order to get a significant amount of heat from electricity, you would have to have a huge (at least 1000 watt) power inverter. An inverter of this size would draw about 90 amps (+/-). You would changing batteries every time you filled up with gas.
Simply too big a load. Not to be compared with a “plug in stereo”.
Royal, I thought that might be the case and I also figured it would be a good way to find out if it would work by saying it . Thanks
Hey John, thanks for the insight into the difficulties of making changes to the seat. I can only hope there’s a way that won’t be that bad, if not I will be prepared for trouble ahead of time.
greg, I like the inverter idea anyhow. The radio in my dash is a basic AM/FM/Cassette and won’t power on– let me rephrase that– it either doesn’t have a power button, switch, knob OR the volume knob is lacking a functional off to on switch. So I was considering removing the radio and putting a little glove box in its place.Here’s the link to the MGB Blanking plate in Moss Motors catalogue. Item 7 for the set.
http://www.mossmotors.com/Shop/ViewProducts.aspx?PlateIndexID=29080
Allen Caron
VW based 53MGTD - "MoneyPenny"
"If one thing matters, everything matters" - from the book The ShackThat’s a great item. I’m thinking it could be spring hinged so it could open, preferably inward but not likely possible being an external plate. Just add a box mounted behind the dash.
At the very least it could be the front of a pull-out drawer.Not sure if you ever worked out the heat…
But for what it’s worth…
The VW lost a lot of heat running the warmed air through the rocker panels ducts.
I have flexible aluminum tubes (about 2.5″ diameter) running from the heater boxes into the passenger
compartment under the seats. No insulation or anything special. My duct work is about two feet long, from heater boxes to interior. The interior gets too hot when heat exchanges are fully open.If you still have some room after lowering your seats, I’m am 100% certain the VW heat will work for your cool Vegas nights.
Paul Mossberg
Former Owner of a 1981 Classic Roadsters Ltd. Duchess (VW)
2005 Intermeccanica RoadsterIf you own a TDr and are not in the Registry, please go to https://tdreplica.com/forums/topic/mg-td-replica-registry/ and register (you need to copy and paste the link)
Paul, the problem with the lowered seat bases was that the heater pipe would have had to make a double 90 degree angle and then be pinched down to about an inch and a half. Considering the heater already wasn’t producing heat, I canned the idea. This also let me get rid of the heater controls off the e-brake (which is between my seats), so I could make the e-brake smoother and allow the seats to be a smidgen wider. I am installing seat heaters and that is more than enough for Vegas. If it is too cold for seat heaters here, it is too cold to drive. LOL
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