Electric Heater

[Safety Guy]

Electric heat would draw a LOT of electricity. I've used one of those HF dash defrosters that cost around $15 or $20 and plug into the cig lighter socket. It barely does the job, slowly!

To heat up the car before starting it would probably drain the battery, so you'd need an extra one or two. I think that's why block heaters run off AC power!

On the other hand, I have thought of this:

An AC heater that you can run an extension cord to from your house or garage. Plug it in with a timer to turn it on an hour before you want to leave in cold weather. The electric heater would be in your car and defrost it in that hour. Before you leave, unplug it and go.

You'd need:

-A heater that fits well into your car, heats up evenly and doesn't get in your way or start a fire.
-Routing the internal cord to a convenient plug.
-Protection for the plug end from the elements as you drive.
-Doing this with a little cover access panel (like the gas cap cover) would be cool!

Zoom, doing this now while you have the car stripped should be relatively easy.

If you park near an electric AC source at work or another destination, you'll have a nice warm car to return to as well!

Even without a heater that works while driving, if your commute is short, you'll stay pretty warm.

Try something like this:

http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Oil-Filled-Electric-Radiator-Heater/2693090/product.html

Or this lower wattage one which may be better:

http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Lifesmart-Low-Energy-Room-Wall-Panel-Heater/6527837/product.html

I just used those for examples. You can probably get these cheaper at other places.

Karl

[link5186]

http://espar.com/html/products/technology_coolant.html if you don't mind adding a small diesel tank. Search "Liquid Heat Generator" for another technology designed to speed warmup time.

Sent from the bathroom via crapatalk.

[TominMO]

Festys warm up pretty fast with the stock heater core, and everything working properly. I'd just get some heated seat pads that you could turn on when you start the car, and leave the rest alone. But since you have the dash out, perhaps you could hybrid the Aspire duct pieces into the Festy, to get hot air out of the dash vents too.

[Movin]

If it is just the window you want to heat you could use a kit like this, but make sure the
element is just below your line of sight.

[walth]

wow, pretty good ideas flowing!

Tom, have you had good luck with the heated seat pads? sounds like something I might look into. I'm okay with the festy heat to a degree.

[htchbck]

Seat heaters are AWESOME!!! Wifey had then in her old 940 and we loved them in the wintertime. I have a couple that I pulled from ripped up leather seats in an 240 at the wreckers, and one of these days I'll get around to sewing them inside a pair of seat covers and rigging them to plug into the cig lighter socket. That way we can take them out and use them in whatever car we happen to be driving that day

[Movin]

The link didn't make it, sorry, here it is

http://www.frostfighter.com/prt2600.htm

[TominMO]

wow, pretty good ideas flowing!

Tom, have you had good luck with the heated seat pads? sounds like something I might look into. I'm okay with the festy heat to a degree.

I haven't used aftermarket heated seat pads; don't feel the need here in STL. And Festy heat is plenty hot if everything is in good shape. You could roast a turkey in my Aspire! (Or freeze it in the summer.) My Festy has lukewarm heat only because I am using a 180 degree thermostat, from when it was turboed. But even that's good enuf since if I need heat, chances are I'm already dressed for cold weather anyway.

Google "heated car seats" for ideas.....

[deathegg]

I gotta say...I have to agree with those who say keep the "stock" setup with the heater core, etc. My Festiva (the DeathEgg), when equipped with the proper thermostat, and everything working right, could roast a chicken with the heat coming out. It's a simple system that works great. I would say go for seat heaters, and if you have the dash out anyway, see it you can re-engineer things so you can have heat come out the dash vents.

[bobstad]

Electric window heaters; and lots of good insulation?

I've been meaning to work on the Festiva this summer which is starting to look like a dead issue; planning ahead for now, to glue inside to all the bare metal I can reach sleeping bag ground pad closed cell foam, I have a good supply of from insulating a '75 Chevy half-ton panel van, I slept in quite a lot during '94, '95 & '96. Maybe next summer?

I did this to the interior ceiling of a '66 VW "square-back" sedan also, with excellent results in both. The immediate result best appreciated was the lack of condensation from bare metal surfaces sleeping inside, which was worse than getting rained on; though I also think heating the vehicles' interiors greatly improved too.

I think I've seen similar to window tint material, with electric heating grids; which could be helpful?

I also once used the blower fan from an old Suburu 360 parts car's heater noticed stored in an orchard, to supplement the air-cooled VW's notoriously bad heater's air-flow. In the VW I chanced to create a far hotter heater-box situation; the heat-exchangers from the exhaust manifolds which make the heater work. With a forced air fan and a lot more heat from the heater boxes, the car's defroster worked like no other air-cooled VW's. I forget what I did to those heater boxes now, which I remember I did by accident; when ducting in the forced air fan from the old Suburu. The alteration was one which after the fact seemed amazingly simple and easy.

There is enough space around a Festiva's exhaust manifold or even perhaps the catalytic converter, that someone with ambition perhaps closer to madness might be able to figure out something like a VW's system.

Though I've also suggested using the automatic transmission cooler on my manual transmission car's radiator, as a secondary cooler for the engine oil, using an after-market adapter to route oil from the spin-on filter. Such an adapter could also be used to route oil to the car's interior and some sort of a radiator there which could be baffled and fitted with a forced air fan. Done well that should work good, and be a little sexy too; not to mention greatly increasing the motor's oil capacity.

I'd try insulation and those electric window grids first; since lots simpler.

Passive technology is really where it's at; in most anything. I really hate that renting cheap apartments over decades, I always seem to get parking spaces in the shade. Ruination for the interiors and paint jobs too.