Anyone running an electric heater setup?

[RomanV]

It's gonna make my life a little easier if I can ditch the heater box, and the coolant lines going to it... for the sake of having more room for my rear water outlet, and it'll tidy my wiring up a bit more if I can stick it all through the hole where the heater water inlet/outlet normally goes.

However it's not really practical to have no heater at all, it's dangerous at times having a stupidly fogged up window.
( And I'm a big girls blouse when it comes to cold mornings. )

So I was wondering, if anyone runs an electric heater setup?

I know that Dylan AKA Caveman runs a 12v hair dryer in place of the heater box etc... But says it works okay, nothing amazing.

I was thinking about perhaps running 2 of these, to up the volume of hot air coming through, and still hopefully have a half way decent demister/heater. (dont mind if the heater is average, demisting window is 1st priority)

Thoughts? Is there something like a marine 12V heater element that you can get or similar? Obviously with the standard setup, the fan blows air through the heater 'radiator' filled with hot coolant, so if I could get an electrically heated element to do the same it obviously wouldnt need a (noisy) fan attached like a hair dryer does.

I've had a quick search for 12 volt appliances, hair dryer seems to be the closest thing to what I need.

Or perhaps I'd just be better off keeping the heater box and modifying the pipes a little....

[Caveman]

hey well first id say if you can keep the stock blower then do so, hair dryer doesnt blow sfa compared to the stock fan.

I would try to replace the heater core with some sort of electrical heater. Amount of power would be difficult to work out but id guess you would want atleast 250W. Just use the inner workings of a heater or some heater wire (quick link http://www.springfield-wire.com/category.cfm?Category=21), watch out for burning parts and possible fire hazard. heater core housing comes out in an easy to work on box so should be able to rig something inside Then you also have instant heat for mornings. If you need a hand with some of the calcs for resistance etc just let me know and I can help, but its piss easy so you should know anyway

as above main problem with hair dryer is flowrate, I have mine pointed more towards the drivers side so get most of the flow over that, doesnt demist the entire windscreen.

[samlloyd]

I'd say you'll need to have air running through an electric heater core to help keep it cool, buy means of a fan etc

[RedMist]

I considered doing this for my Mitsi rally car. I investigated using car electric heaters as advertised on ebay, amazon etc. However I noted several of these had been used by the kit car fraternaty in the UK with little success. One had three of them setup across the windscreen just to demist and had very little success with them.
Hence I reinstalled the stock heater core in the Celica and just run a high volume 6 inch fan to feed it where the AC unit used to be installed. Even this doesnt flow heaps of volume and makes a shyte of a noise.

[Stealer Of Souls]

Not enough go go juice will be your biggest hurdle. At 12V you just can't get much grunt from the alternator before you need power wires the size of your finger.
I think the best bet is nichrome wire, and making your own heater element then using this in place of the existing heater core. I toyed with making it a 12/24V system with 24V alternator and a 24/12V converter to run the 12V electronics. This would make things like electric heaters a little easier. But that all got too hard, 24V alternators are pathetic.

[Jdawg]

What about using rear window demister at the bottom of the screen to give it a boost?

[Distrb]

as jdawg said, get a demister kit and apply it to your windscreen before you put it in.as seen in 88gtz's project thread.



i'm running in one in my corolla, and NZ_AE86 is running one in his race car, which works particularly well.

[Voyeur]

Depending on your budget & size limitations, what about a 12/240v inverter, and then your less limited to small heater units. you could use an old goldair box heater in your housing for like $2 off trademe, the cost would be in the inverter 5 or 600 dollars

[Mr.Phreak]

Hope you're insured against fire (even though it'd probably be void with half these ideas)

[sergei]

I think electric heater would not have enough kW to compete with water, as the water heater is basically free power, as 75% of energy that gasoline produces wasted anyway as heat.

[matt dunn]

I worked on a SAME ( it's a brand name) Tractor with an electric heater.
It used a stand alone 120 amp alternator to supply the current,

and on full heat used 120A.

Elec is not the way to go for heat,

Just get somefans and ducting and blow cold air,
or use the stick on demisters.

[sergei]

I know that some of the air cooled cars resort to separate petrol burner to provide heat.
Slightly off topic, in Russia people adapted these petrol burning heaters to cope with cold in winter on normal cars because the stock heater even with radiator completely blanked off with a pipe, was not enough, also engine failure in middle of nowhere (basically between towns) equates to death unless you find a way to keep your self warm.

Think of it this way, if normal driving etc. car probably wastes about ~25- 50kw of energy as heat. That is about 20 to 40 times more than 120A will ever make on 12V system, even if quarter of that heat is recaptured for heating the electric system is still far off, also the water heater is free, while electric heater will consume power and guess - create even more wasted heat.

[Stealer Of Souls]

Yep.. there isn't really any comparison between the original heater system and an electric one.

But I don't think that's the point.
It's a bummer that you are looking to recover space in this exercise. I've wondered about using an electric heater as a boost to the original heater system for those times when the car isn't warmed up, and you need a bit of heat.

[johntramp]

http://silenceisdefeat.org/~lgtngstk/Sites/Circuits/12V_Heater/Heater.html

[fxgt race]

After running no heaters with little vision on a wet day i put a 12v hair dryer in and it was useless and i had all vents closed off apart from the one in front of me and it wouldn't clear a thing.In the end i used the smaller fan from an air ionizer in the back off a ae101 and a small oil cooler and run the water lines to this in a home made housing,this works well for a compac system.

[RomanV]

Thread bump.

Not really applicable anymore, as I'm running the heater. BUT

I just had an idea for a demister that might work.

What about heating up the water in the washer nozzle sprayer bottle?

You could warm up your windscreen from the outside, with warm water.

Maybe run a coolant line through the middle of the bottle, so it'd radiate heat into it.

[mr30%jr]

that theory kinda works but the internal demister is trying to evap the condensation inside by blowing warm air over it. you could do some trails in winter by pouring warm water on a foggy window

[RomanV]

It only condenses on there in the first place, because the glass is colder than the air.

Warm glass = no condensation.

Although for all the effort, guess it's just as good to keep the heater, unless you need the heater box removed for whatever reason.

[matt dunn]

It only condenses on there in the first place, because the glass is colder than the air.

Warm glass = no condensation.

Although for all the effort, guess it's just as good to keep the heater, unless you need the heater box removed for whatever reason.

Good in theroy, but since the screen usually fogs when it's raining,
you need enough hot water to keep the screen warm, even with cold rain on the outside too.
IMO, never going to work, but hey if you want to try, i'm sure that was said about lots of stuff that now does work.

[lucasthefallen]

Thread bump.

Not really applicable anymore, as I'm running the heater. BUT

I just had an idea for a demister that might work.

What about heating up the water in the washer nozzle sprayer bottle?

You could warm up your windscreen from the outside, with warm water.

Maybe run a coolant line through the middle of the bottle, so it'd radiate heat into it.

quite a few european cars actually have heated sprayer nozzles for this purpose!