Since I'm selling my Dodge to pay bills that's gonna make Charlie my only tow/haul machine.So for safety's sake I need to install some kinda defroster system.Never did this mod and need some ideas and thoughts.
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Since I'm selling my Dodge to pay bills that's gonna make Charlie my only tow/haul machine.So for safety's sake I need to install some kinda defroster system.Never did this mod and need some ideas and thoughts.
If you find an original heater kit, it's pretty easy, but expect to spend $750-$1500 depending on condition, at least from the few I've seen on ebay.
I installed a Ford truck heater (from an '84 f-150) and most of its ductwork, with some quick fabrication to fit the defrost vents, and flexible hoses to connect to the heater ductwork. Roll metal/plastic into a 2" tube with flat ends on one side (like c=, but slightly flatter on one side), cap off one end, stick the flexible hose on the other, and pop it into the defrost vents from the underside of the dash. Or, at least, that's how I did it - look under the dash to see the exact shape it needs to be.
By using the ford heater, it cost very close to nothing... if you find one from someone's parts truck that doesn't need a new core (the one I found did), it might even be nothing. If you keep the interior ductwork as well, you'll get both temperature control (hot/cold) and outlet control (off/floor/defrost). You have to cut a couple corners off the plastic and glue it back on to clear parts of the body, but it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes... it took me longer because I welded them on, but if I were doing it again, glue! The heater shape is close enough to Jeep's that I didn't need to modify the firewall in any way, except drilling two of the screw holes - both the cowl intake hole and the hole in the firewall to get the air inside lined up.
http://randyg.org/trip/small/small-imgp2655.jpg
http://randyg.org/trip/small/small-imgp2653.jpg
Other, easier options are a heater from a J-series truck, or one of those little square aftermarket heaters. Or a towel. :)
--Randy
Yeah I swapped in a civvy heater box and vacuum controller for the air direction valves. I used a slightly modified set of defrost vent heads from a 47 Chevy something I found on E-Bay. The only snag I hit in the whole ordeal was that the defrost door was hanging up on me, it ended up that I hadn't used enough of a spacer on the driver's side mounting screw. Once I got that solved everything works fine. I used a choke cable for the heat door pull and bypassed the blower speed resistor. Just make sure you wire it properly if you do that, you don't want any fires.
Just use the heater setup from a wagoneer or j truck. The most it should cost is maybe a hundred bucks. Defroster ducts are about $80.00 new. Pretty easy install, hardes part is fabbing new mounts to switch from vacume switches to cable switches, but still not that difficult.
Civvy heaters bolt right in...can even be converted to all cable actuation if you want to go that far.
I bought a 24 volt NOS setup from VPW...very complete with every nut, bolt, cable, switch, and all the original Jeep instructions and baggies with the Jeep logo on them...already all painted OD to boot...it was around $400 at that time.
Here is my thread on my heater install:
http://www.m715zone.com/vb/showthrea...heater+install
I still haven't done the defroster ducting yet. Figure I'll just wait until the day after I get stuck in a rainstorm and can't see where I'm going to finish that little project up. :D