Cheap or homemade heater?

[beast 496]

Yes, I use the 28,000 btu heaters from Heater craft ordered out of 4wd hardware. Al

[cadunkle]

For better or worse I'm trying the home made route. Got most of the parts now. This weekend I'll pick up 3 4'x8' panels of sheet metal from a friend who wants them gone, and the required fittings. If I get over this cold I'll see about making a heater box. For now, here's what I have. The heater core is huge, with tanks it measures out to 13 3/4" x 7 7/8". Should really kick out some heat! Still unsure of how the blower motors to push will work out. At first I was wondering if they wouldn't be enough airflow, now I'm thinking maybe too much? I can always put them on a resistor to have multiple speeds, or modify for another type of fan/blower later.

[cadunkle]

Also, I ordered one seat heater kit to try on the drivers seat. I figure if it's not too difficult I'll do the observer seat too. I was hoping for a simple install just pull the skin apart from the seat and slide the heater pad in. Not so simple, there is a piece that attaches the piping toward the front of the seat to the seat base that obstructs the heater. Apparently you can cut slits in the heater pad between the elements, so I'm going to try doing that and reattaching the strap to the seat base through the heater pad so I have heat across the whole seat and the upholstery still fits tight. I have a feeling the seat back will be even worse but I'll figure it out when I get to that part. Has anyone else done seat heaters that might have some pointers?

[cadunkle]

Driver's seat base done. Just need to do the seat back, not today though.

[wotan2525]

Glad you decided to blaze the trail on this... Looking good! Also, the proper tools always help. In this case? Makers Mark!

[chrisk]

Haha I was going to comment on the Makers also!

I'm interested to hear how the seat back goes, also, how convenient/inconvenient it is having your seat bottom plugged in.

[cadunkle]

Well I got my motivation in gear despite still being sick. Picked up 3 sheets of sheet metal from a friend last night and today made a rough template from cardboard, cut the metal, and bent it to what I need. So I need to make a lid/front for the box, make the holes for the blowers/vent ducts/heater lines, weld, and paint. Will post pictures when it's done. Cost should be right around what I figured previously. In retrospect it might have been prudent to do this in aluminum due to the marine environment, but my boat doesn't stay in the water or see salt so I'm not too worried. Besides, the metal was free and I'm not set up to weld aluminum. I'm thinking it might be good to put a strainer on the raw water intake though, to prevent the heater core fore getting plugged up.

Didn't feel like diving into the seat back today. I'm sick and don't feel like having to be too creative with upholstery if I find what I think I will inside the seat. I have a tentative plan but I'll deal with that when the time comes. As for the wires, I don't expect them to be a problem. Each pad comes with a clip/plug on the wire that plugs into the main switch/fuse harness so they can be quickly disconnected. I plan to drill a hole in the bottom of the seat to run the wires through and then into the side panel under the throttle and under the dash. No idea where I will mount the switch for the heated seats yet. Could be on dash, under dash, under seat, in side panel, or who knows.

As for the whiskey... There's always a Plan B, and it's usually Makers Mark.

[cadunkle]

Just about done. Heater is installed in the boat as of tonight. Crunch to get it in before riding tomorrow. Had a little trouble with the electrical. Planned to wire it up to the secondary blower breaker in the dash but it was only 6 amps, and the only other free breaker I had was 10 amps and wasn't quite enough for two 4" blowers pulling 4.x amps each. I rigged it up straight to the battery through a 15 amp fuse and wire run from battery box to under dash. This week I'll order a 15 amp breaker to run it off the dash and wire it up that way. It's about 50* out right now and running on the hose to about 140* it sure felt nice having that warm air blowing on me. Real test will be on the water to see if I need to go to a warmer thermostat or not.

I have 3 3" outlets and I just quickly put hose on two of them. I noticed there is uneven air flow through the 3 outlets. Not sure what I can do about that, but any warm air is better than cold air I'd imagine. Forecast is 47* air and 55* water when I splash, so this should be a welcome addition to the ol' Saltare.

No heater seats yet. Just have the one seat base but didn't install the seat back yet. Probably do that this week. The blower motors made it clear to me that all new additions that have electrical draw will require their own tap direct off the battery, so it's just as well since I need to get some more electrical parts. Anyone know how many amps the alternators on these things are? It's a PCM 454.

Wondering at what point I'll have charging issues. Blower motors are around 10 amps combined, heated seats I think 7.5 and if the one works well I'll be adding two more kits so that would be 22.5 amps... So just stuff to keep warm would be 32.5 amps. Figure head unit must pull 5-10 amps... It'll trip the stereo breaker if I turn it up too loud. Not sure what the motor/ignition draws. Could be looking at a lot of power draw. Don't really turn crazy RPM riding, maybe 2300 at 21 MPH I want to say so alternator isn't spinning crazy fast. Not sure what the power curve on these things is but I know it's not peak at 2300 RPM.

[cadunkle]

On a somewhat related note... How cold air/water do you guys ride? I haven't got the the "holy $&%^ it's cold" point yet but when the water gets into the 40s I'll probably be to the point of forcing myself to ride vs. being enthusiastic, and the extra work of winterizing ol' Salty after every outing will be tiring. Usually I winterize around this time but this year I have a full 4/3 suit and now heat, so pushing the envelope.

[cadunkle]

Maybe a bit late but I finally worked up the nerve to pull the drivers seat back apart today and finish the heater seater install. It was a pain, since the inner section is narrow and the piping is attached to the seat back with vinyl stapled in. This part was narrower than the heater so created a problem, as expected. I dealt with this by tucking the sides in along the side of teh inner foam piece and up top cutting a slit in the foam to tuck it in. I also had to cut the vinyl that attaches the piping to allow the heater through, through I cut the heater in the middle to allow the piping to still attach to the seat back. Overall, I hate upholstery and staples, but it came out pretty decent.

Wired it up to the battery, which was a pain as usual to run cables through the bilge. Testing it I let it sit while heating for about 5 minutes then felt the seat. It was somewhat warm though the upper section of the seat back isn't as warm as I would hope. I wonder if cutting it (as specified in the instructions) weakened the heating ability of that part. Similarly the rear section of the seat bottom doesn't feel terribly warm which is odd since it's closest to the plug, but the forward section is very warm. This could also be due to the rear section of the seat base having a lot more padding and insulation between the heater element and the vinyl. It may just take longer than I gave it to heat up. It's freakin' cold out so I'm also wearing thermals under my jeans as well as 3 layers up top. I will say that once I sat down the seat back felt VERY warm and pleasant. Real test will be a cold day on the water. Maybe next weekend. Water temp is down about mid 40s and air in early AM is high 30s/low 40s so it'll be a good test. I also got my heater vent situation sorted and they're attached with glue and zip ties so I should be able to have a real test of the heater next time out.