Thread: Cheep heat for the model A

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It didnt take long after buying this car (see avitar) to realise that the builder, back in the 80s, only owned a few tools. a hammer, a screwdriver, and a swiss army knife. oh ya... and a stick welder and cutting torch. he had some good ideas, but not much real fabrication skill. the heater he had was home built from (I suspect) the donor MustangIIs heater motor and core + a fabricated tin box under the seat. it wasn't mounted to anything, and the heater motor growled like crazy so I pulled it out today for some TLC....... I ended up building a whole new case out of aluminum sheet. the first shot is the POs case (note the air intake opening which looks to have been made with a can opener. oh well.. he did the best he could with what he had to work with I guess. someone will probly' say similar things about mine someday

Lotsa

and with some honeycomb screens and a bit of hammertone paint.

That's a good way to do it. Do you have any plans for defrosters or won't you need them?

Don

My only defroster plan is to fold out the windshield a tad . I think it would be a bit of a challenge to add defroster tubes behind a model a dash, but I'm sure there's a way if it really proved to be needed.

lotsa

I wasn't going to put a heater in my 29 roadster, but I drove it to the shop today, ( 26 degrees ) and I think I'll take a page from your book and do the same. Even with the top it was cold!!! I'll have to put my heater under the dash somewhere but I'll figure it out. I didn't think I would drive it when it got cold but with the sun out it's a nice day for Wisconsin and I thought what the hell. Even a little heat would be nice. A good project for when the snow flies. Between that and a hood I'll keep busy over the winter. Nice job on yours, the box looks great.

Oldschool66

I installed a small universal heater from Vintage Air but I have not tried it yet. I did not like the complicated vacuum-activated water valve and have installed a manual valve in the water hose in front of the firewall. Your fabricated unit looks GREAT! Nice Work! The Vintage Air unit mounts to any flat surface with two bolts and I hung it on the inside of the firewall. Your under-seat position probably avoids the problem of routing hoses through the firewall and can be under the floor. As of now the space under my seat is wasted but I have been thinking of some sort of wooden drawers with space for maps and small tools under there. In my case I mounted the outlet where my wife's feet would/will be, a real consideration, although she wants air conditioning which I refuse to do considering the many leaks around the windshield and wind wings!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Hey Toys, that's a great looking unit!!!! For you guys with a bit more room, like in a sedan or something, the same plan works great using a heater core and fan from an early 70's Ford pickup!

I like the under seat position as it's pretty much wasted space and I'm still using the cowl fuel tank, so not a lot of room under the dash. The heater core, which I reused from the POs system, is unusual in that it's vertually square in cross section. I've never seen one like it but it sure made for a nice compact heater box. I'm sure a decent parts house could figure out what it was made for. as I mentioned before, I wouldn't be surprised if it came out of an early Pinto or Mustang II, as many other parts of this car did. Thanks for the + guys.

Cheers,
Lotsa

It looks nice, thanks for sharing!!

Does anyone know of a reasonable priced cable operated heater hose valve that re-dirrects rather than just shutting off the flow? this would be a "Y" or "T" valve. I had purchased a shutoff valve but then I duiscovered that one of the heater hoses also goes through a choke heater (2.3L 4 cyl) so I need to re-dirrect rather that shut off the water.

Thanks,
Lotsa