[Vwdiesel] Anyone try this? (To have a warm toasty car)

[Patrick Dolan]

Bill:

I lived through a lot of -40 and -50 days in air cooled VWs, and seemed to find various ways of making them more habitable.  It was the arrival of exhaust heat exchangers in 1963 that made the big difference.  The real secred was to drive the crap out of them (more engine load = more exhast heat = more interior heat).  On my '65 Ghia I went back to 1200ccs when it was my commuter car from school, and it came down to nice and warm going West (upwind) and too cold going East (downwind, less engine load).

However, today we have an insulation option that wasn't there in the "old days" - sprayed on expanded polyurethane foam.  To place it, one should pull all of the headliner and interior panels, mask the whole thing, and get a contractor to shoot your car(s) and/or truck(s) while doing a bigger job (cost of cleaning the gun too high for small jobs).  Makes for an incredtibly warm and quet cab(in) that is a real bitch to do future body work on.

Pat


----- Original Message -----
From: William J Toensing <toensing at wildblue.net>
Date: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 4:28 am
Subject: [Vwdiesel] Anyone try this? (To have a warm toasty car)

> I don't know if I have written about this before but this was 
> something I did to have a warm toasty VW air-cooled beetle in -20 
> degree Minn. winters. This was done back in the winter of 1958 
> when there were no warnings about asbestos. Some of these 
> suggestions might be useful today, others not. When I was on 
> active duty in the Navy stationed in Norfolk, VA, I took delivery 
> of my first new car, a 1957 black VW Beatle. I was released from 
> active duty on 12/7/57 & drove back home to Minn. I had read 
> somewhere in a VW club newsletter that existed at the time, a 
> suggestion about improving the heating qualities of a VW sedan (as 
> it was then called) & basically it was insulating the passenger 
> compartment from the outside cold. From a hardware store I got 
> some sheet asbestos from a hardware store & rapped the heater 
> boxes with  it securing it with lite wire. I then covered the 
> heater boxes with heavy duty aluminum freezer foil, securing it 
> with lite wire to protect the asbestos from water & 
> 
> Cars in the late 1930s & older had re-circulating heaters with 
> either no or inefficient defrosters. What one did back then in 
> Minn., other cold winter states, & I assume Canada as well, was to 
> put frost shields on the windshield, side & rear windows to be 
> able to see out in winter. The deluxe windshield frost shields had 
> electric heating elements built into them for the windshields. 
> Another accessory was to mount a small electric fan on the 
> steering column to blow warm inside air against the windshield. I 
> believe the first car to take fresh cold outside air & channel it 
> thru the heater core was Nash with its Weather Eye "air-
> conditioned" heater to eliminate the need for frost shields. 
> Most of you are no longer driving air-cooled VWs in the winter but 
> ever you can do to insulate your car for the severe winter would 
> probably help. I WOULD NOT recommend use of asbestos for health 
> reasons, if you could find it. I think spun fiberglass insulation 
> would work just as well.
> Bill Toensing, Nevada City, CA
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