quick acting heater solution?

Is it a fixed fan blade or a viscous one on a 90 that old? If fixed, try fitting a viscous or electric fan, that would allow the engine to heat up quicker.

If the thermostat is working properly, the type of fan should make no difference.

If the vehicle is mostly pootling around at low speeds, then air flow through the rad from the fan would be significant, at which point the type of fan would be significant, but certainly not so much the case on faster trips where the air flow through the rad is mostly due to forward motion.

What about putting a larger tube over a part of the exhaust pipe and blow fresh air in one end and then this air will be heated by the exhaust and duct this in to the cab.... sounds like a cool idea ( or a hot one )

WARNING : to do this you must ensure NO exhaust gasses can enter this " ducted air " as it would then gas you !!!!!!!! The old VW beetles use to do this with fins round a part of the exhaust which was in a casing, then the fan which was used to cool the engine was ducted through these heat exchanges and blown in to the interior.. worked very well got real hot..

Rich

Pinz and VW campers do this, someone suggested recently that fitting a VW camper van heat exchanger to the landy heating system would make the cab heat up faster. I know that now I've drained all the water out of my pinz heating system the hot air starts coming out a lot faster than it does on my defender.

Heating air in a water-cooled car relies on the engine getting hot, heating water, and the water heating the air, all this takes some time but an exhaust-mounted heat exchanger only waits for the exhaust to get hot, which happens much faster than the engine and coolant getting hot, and the exhaust then heats the air.

But the point is, if the thermostat is working properly, there would be no water flowing through the radiator until the engine has warmed up, so the airflow across the radiator is irrelevant, as is the type of fan.

Certainly, but people who fit radiator muffs seem to find the car heats up quicker in the morning so I can only assume that the restriction of airflow through the engine bay has a useful effect.

The exhaust manifold on my car gets hot enough to burn your arm on in around 1 minute or so!...

Well that's it then a bit of fining on a bit of the exhaust pipe and a case round it no one should ever complain that their series is cold again :-) bring on the cold weather.

Rich

Indeed from experience, that is the case. My first 90, a late '84,

Neil

(Reply via NG please)