The Triumph Dolomite Club - Discussion Forum

Well there have been a few if, buts, and wherefores about "works" part of it; but no so much related to "all weathers".

But I've had at least one Dolomite or TR7 Sprint as daily drives ever since about 1985. I had a TR7V8 as well for a couple of years, but the wife used to steal that all the time cos they're a lazy driver's car. And a 1.6L ford Crapie for almost year, but that was cos it's reg was ATR 716V when I got it. It was a car so horrible that when it was stolen the thieves brought it back.

Graham

I thought I needed to find the current this heater unit draws to fit a thermal switch, and hence was waiting for the high power resister to measure it. But I thought about it a bit and worked out that if I put the relay in or close to the heater box, and put the thermal switch between the ignition fuse and the relay control, I can do it with a low current device. That has the added advantage of saving a couple of bob too.



I'm not having the success I expected in finding more powerful fans than the supposedly 4.5 Watt ones supplied - don't think they blow that hard, though I haven't checked if they are drawing 0.3A as stated and I've a suspicion they are 0.13 fans mislabeled. It's my experience that's a real problem with things with the sort of origin of this box.

But on the replacement fans - if that's what I need -, when I was investigating the idea of putting fans behind the eyeball dash vents (it works, but it's not really worth the effort), I found a 25 Watt 60mm fan out of an IBM server hot-swap module at a reasonable price. That's a real screamer and needs a switched mode controller in series to tame it a bit. But now all I can find are 10W units at anything like a reasonable enough price, and I think I may want more power than that - however much it may corrupt.

There's also a small issue with the vents. The Herald ones I have aren't worth using. While there are some 40mm vents on ebay that should fit the pipes supplied, the ones I like are 42mm ones.



I expect I could join some 42mm pipe to the 40mm (but the 42mm pipe adds to the cost more than I like) or maybe split the 40mm pipe and tape it to fit the 42mm vents. So I'm vacillating about what to buy.

Graham

nice to hear that people are using them a cars not just pension boosters

"pension booster"?

Being of pensionable age, if still working till The Horde of The Things stop draining my resources so effectively (I should be so lucky), I'm not sure how I feel about that pejorative.

Graham

sorry graham that not a dig at you.........but people are buying classic car to boost their failing pension plans and selling cars for outragous prices and forcing only the rich to have them,,,,is this the way forward?

Ah, didn't recognize the term.

I'm ambivalent about prices going up as I'm not expecting to buy more classics - SWMBO would do 'er nut. But then I might have to sell one in a while.

I'm more interested in what it does to the availability of spares - more cars being done up, maybe, so more new spares available; but fewer being scrapped, so fewer SH.

Graham

The resistor tuned up before I got round to measuring the outlet temp.

It draws just over 21A with a 0.01 Ohm 5W resister in series, so 210mV drop.

At about 250 Watts - allowing about 10 for the two fans - that's a bit more than I expected. But it ain't the 500W advertised and 40 or so amps. Still, I never expected it would be even this high or I'd have got a 10W resistor - this one were a bit warm dissipating near 4.5W.

The output air temperature is about 60C with an inlet temp of about 8C and the fans fitted not exactly blowing a gale. It seems a bit better with the box wrapped in parcel tape for the test, and maybe good enough for a de-mister. I'm going to get a 80C thermal switch (cos that's the cheapest I can find) and see how close I can get that to the heater element on the fan side without it trips when the fans blow.
I should check it trips before the element fails when the fans stop, but that risks being a destructive test. So I won't.

Graham