Might I inquire about ACVW's in the winter?

I am on the hunt for a winter car and had the brilliant idea that a VW beetle, preferably with Baja treatment, would be perfect.

I have never had an aircooled car, is the heater adequate for winter use? How about ceramic heaters?

Oops, didn't mean to post this in off-topic.

They work pretty good when warmed up in the cars, but it does take a while for them to warm up since they have no thermostatic cooling control (they get full cooling all the time). In super cold environments I have heard they are pretty marginal. I have seen an accessory for the cars that were a combination blower and electric heater (since the cars have no heater blower, just the force of the engine cooling fan)

Also, many time Baja bugs will have the heater boxes removed.

best thing you can do is ditch the cooling fan powered air and install blowers to push air through the heaterboxes.

This will allow you to recirculate the air too.. all it requires is punching a hole (or two) through the firewall and bolting up the squirrel fan assembly to the firewall and then a 12 volt powersupply and a pair of high temp airhoses down to the boxes...

Also.. Aircooled VDubs DO have a thermostat. It controls the flaps at the bottom of the fan shroud. When cold, they are closed.

Having spent most of my childhood and young adulthood in air cooled VWs, many of them purchased new, I shudder even at the thought of this question.

Most of them (bus excluded) will marginally raise the ambient temperature in the cabin to barely tolerable levels given sufficient time. This assumes everything is working properly.

Good luck with the 'everything working properly' clause.

When it gets REALLY cold - let's say south of 10 degrees F, all bets are off.

I once had a perfectly operating, no rust, 4 year old bay window bus. It couldn't defrost the windscreen after running for an hour under those conditons. They don't have a lot of insulation, so heat escapes quickly too.

In cold climates, they had gas heaters.

And the gas heaters worked pretty well at seting the whole car on fire.....

Whats your definition of winter? 50* F with the wind chill? Might be ok. -40 plus wind chill? Just sleep in your freezer. Its a more comfortable way to die.

Ok, maybe it wasn't such a brilliant idea. I live in Ohio so winter is 0-20F.

One way described to me by someone who was an engineer for that company during that period, was that the heater could get a 20 degree temperature rise. So, on a cold day, you're still getting sub-freezing "heat".

Compare with watercooled cars, where if you're not getting at least 160 degrees out of the vents, there's probably a problem with the heater system... generally you get air that's 20 degrees cooler than the coolant.

And then you have modern cars, which more and more have an electric grid on the heater core for INSTANT heat, so you don't have to sit there for five minutes waiting for the engine to build enough heat to keep the windshield from icing over as soon as you start moving. (I want to retrofit this)

I have seen kits to make an oilpowered heater.. basically an oilcooler with a fan inside the cabin

Some of the buses had electric fans for the heater, otherwise the aftermarket is full of them. Drawing air from inside to circulate over the heater boxes goes a long way. To get more heat you can route a big external oil cooler inside the cabin as well. The combination is pretty decent.

With a Subie engine swap you have no shortage of heating options....

Can't speak for a Vee-Dub but I drove a Corvair through the winter once.

Notice I said once......

I did learn one lesson from that experience though. Those disposable hand warmers can burn genitalia when used not as intended.

mad_machine wrote: I have seen kits to make an oilpowered heater.. basically an oilcooler with a fan inside the cabin

^This You can pull heat directly off the oil cooler using it as a heater core. I've seen kits to duct the heat from the engine mounted cooler to the interior cabin but your better bet is to mount an external accessory oil cooler. In the summer you can mount it outside the cabin for additional cooling, in the winter you can have an interior mount or some setup that would allow the heat to be ducted into the car.

Also as others have said, adding fans to draw the air over the heater boxes goes a long way. I lived with ACVWs as my only transport through many winters. I stuck 2 small 12v computer fans in front of the rear heater ducts to draw air through and it worked fine.

Defrost still sux.

And as MM mentioned, ACVWs do indeed have a thermostatic control. Most are poorly maintained or removed by owners who dont know any better, but they should be there for proper running of the engine and longevity.

Evan, I thought about this too, years ago with the idea that if those baja bugs can go over sand so easy snow shouldn't be much harder. Then I had ONE winter with my 914 and that ended that plan. These days your options (as mentioned above) probaby make it a bit easier to solve that issue though.

...and I like the way some of the baja veedubs look too...

If the gasoline heater is like the Janitrol units in most piston engined , twin engined aircraft, the only part that would scare me would be the maintenance. They work very well but require a good cool down, 3-4 minutes of running the fan after the heater is shut off. If this is not done they are very costly to fix. I like the oil cooler idea. My dad's Thing had sheet metal baffles that restricted the cooling air to the engine. They seemed to work well.

Evan, I'm local and can supply you with a good shaking/smack or whatever it is you need to restore some sense to your head.

What horrendous act have you committed to heap an aircooled punishment upon yourself?

A Baja-equipped Bug would have all kinds of ignition problems in deep (2"+) snow, unless you ran a sealed, weatherproof cap, wires, and lots of dilectric grease on the plug wire ends. And I don't even want to think about the exposed alternator belt, and surrounding area, getting packed with blowing snow that melts and then freezes.... It can be done, but be prepared for some interesting times

For 3 years I drove a '73 Beetle ( from 1979 - 82). The first winter was rough, I always tried to have someone ride with me so they could scrape the inside of the windows while I drove. After that, I found a good, used gas heater and never had any more issues. I remember one night I pulled a Renault 5 out of a snow bank with that car - fond memories...

I ice raced a Corvair in Wi... which meant driving nearly 2 hours in often subzero pre-daylight weather there and the same back in post-daylight weather.

The first thing to do was to seal up the vents... in most of these cars the factory free air ventilation (which is exceptional) no longer seals up... so in driving more cold air is forced into the car than the heater puts out. Once that was solved (and the windows properly adjusted) the car was much warmer. Not really a modification; just returning the car to original design specs.

Second modification was making sure the summer-winter plate was in the correct position ("summer" props open a thermostat door slightly) and that the thermostats and doors were properly adjusted. Again, just reutrning the car to original design specs. See a trend here?

My only real modification was a modern high volume blower... just to provide more flow into the car.

My only behavioral modification was to let the car warm up for 15 minutes before driving... if you started driving on a cold engine in subzero temps, it struggled to heat up. But once hot, it tended to stay that way and did not cool down on the highway.

I typically drove there and back in a sweater... no winter coat necessary (for the drive anyway... standing on the ice in 30mph winds was another story)

I've never heard of a Corvair gas heater catching on fire... same make as the VW's. My Tatra gas heater (of similiar design) was actually inside the car under the driver's seat! All of the gas heaters worked exceptionally well.

My Corvair-powered VW Westy really struggles to stay warm... I bought a factory gas heater to install, but frankly I drive it so seldom in really cold weather that an LP "Mr. Buddy" does the trick...

My first two cars were a '56 and '61 VW. My mom was driving a '60 about the same time. None of them had a working heater and there were COLD. I learned to keep a towel and ice scrapper handy. And at night it was a special treat because the six volts lights were very dim.

Make sure the engine tin is present and in good shape. The same goes for all body seals, gaskets, etc. Heat tubes, etc. are often rusted now, or clogged with petrified who-knows-what. Fix them. Then think about the forced air, auxiliary heaters, etc.

These guys didn't seem to mind the bug - think Ohio is colder than the South Pole?

ansonivan wrote: Evan, I'm local and can supply you with a good shaking/smack or whatever it is you need to restore some sense to your head. What horrendous act have you committed to heap an aircooled punishment upon yourself?

Do you have a car to supply me with? I suppose a Scirocco with a redundant engine should do nicely in the snow, I have $1000

EvanB wrote: Do you have a car to supply me with? I suppose a Scirocco with a redundant engine should do nicely in the snow, I have $1000

A grand? Done! I pulled the heater box to make room for shifter cables but you could just cut a sliding trap door in the rear firewall for adjustable heat.

You wouldn't happen to have any proof of this Scirocco winter driving ability, would you?

Cool old VW ad with bonus truck content at the end.

jrw1621 wrote: You wouldn't happen to have any proof of this Scirocco winter driving ability, would you?

There are a few here:

http://durocco.com/media.html