Heater v Heated Seats

[Northwarks]

I have a heater .... does a great job of warming up my keys and occasionally warms my knees and hands at traffic lights, backs of the hands tend to suffer most.

[Steve (sdh2903)]

Bit of a topic wander. But what heaters are people recommending. Is the WF supplied one the best or are the ones from CBS or T7 worth a look?

[Gary Taylor]

I have a micro t7 one but am a bit miffed with it to be honest

Your never going to get tin top heat/ demist but even after all my efforts to seal and duct it really doesn't help

I fancy trying those BMW ones as it should put it direct rather than ducted as long as they heat and blow rather than just blow

Time to experiment

[Gary Taylor]

TBH if you can get the Westfield heater and ducting in it is probably your best bet as it's designed to fit rather than adapting something else

Don't underestimate how much room the trunking / hose takes up

The wf ducting is moulded to fit so is a lot neater

Good luck

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Have done MUCH experimenting on this!

The T7 micro heater just isn't big enough in my opinion, their bigger modular style version is better, but unfortunately to some extent, suffers the same problem as the factory heater; i.e. It relies on the "wrong" sort of fan to draw the air through.

The sort of fans the micro and ultra compact heaters like these use are just not designed for moving large volumes of air, which is what is required. You need a "squirrel cage" style blower - exactly the sort of thing BMW have built into that rear window demister and that most production cars these days use in their main heaters. Depending on size and (motor) power these style blowers can move a serious amount of air.

On my last car I had one mounted on the engine bay side, that blew directly into the front of the Westfield heater, which I removed the old motor and fan from. It was utterly fantastic, I timed it once at under twenty seconds on full speed to clear the Westfields windscreen of "mist".

My current cars under bonnet layout meant I've had to have the blower on one side, and duct it into the heater. It's OK, but nowhere near as good as it was, so I've already made a new heater, thin enough to mount on the drivers side above the steering column, so that I can have the blower feeding directly into it again. Fitting it is a job for this winter!

On an additional note, drawing the air you're feeding into the heater from outside the cockpit, also has the advantage that with the hood up, in the rain, you're not just recirculating damp air, the way you do with the standard heater! Again, this means it soon demists and stays demisted.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Here's the sort of blower I mean:

It's installed under the drivers side rear intake in the V8 type bonnet, the black metal wall round it helps stop the blower just sucking in air from under the bonnet.

This, I'm embarrassed to say is the mass of ducts it blows through and that I plan to simplify:

[guyeds]

Now that would be very nice heated steering wheel.  It would beat alternating which hand is between my legs!...

Well that's one way to take your mind of the cold!