HEATERS
by Takeo De Meter
We
all get cold sometimes an then we turn the heater on and with the heater
on we feel quite comfortable in our vehicle. Yea, right. If you don‘t
own a series Land-Rover that is. My first brand new diesel S III 109 had
a heater that was nothing much more than a mouse breathing on my toe and
the „heater“ in my Stage One was not much better.
However, one fine day, I got a little bit to deep in the water in a fording
exercise and that fan developed some interesting water pump characteristics,
sucking water in from the outside and pumping it straight into the top
of my rubber boots. (see picture).
I never changed
it because of sheer laziness, but I got in a S III once with a decent
heater and that was a really comfy 109 ragtop at minus 10° C in Germany.
So I wondered what sort of extensive modifications the owner had done
and I was even thinking of a Webasto or Eberspächer autonomous heater,
when he told me he had plucked something out of a Volkswagen Polo at a
junkyard and made a tinplate adaptor for it. I still did not believe my
eyes when I saw it under the hood. The Polo fan was very loud, but at
least it effectively defrosted the windschield and heated the car too.
WOW. Nice.
The radiator in the S III heater is not the problem, the damn fan is way
to weak to move any significant volume of air at any setting. Unfortunately,
I don‘t have any pictures of it, but since I am to repair my Stage
One in the foreseeable future, I will certainly do a similar conversion
and then I will let you guys know all about it.