Sunday 24 March 2019

FHC resto nr. 78; Heater rebuild final part (#9)


At last there is light at the end of the tunnel, because you are reading what looks like the last report on the car’s heater rebuilt (fingers crossed!). Yesterday saw the  final saga of this project in a project: fitting the heater to the car. But there were some smaller jobs that had to be done first.
I fitted an extra (second) fixing point to the bulkhead seal plate, so I had to drill an extra hole for this. This was the easy bit, because I thought it would be much simpler to use the seal plate as a template when it was not fitted to a cumbersome heater! Indeed was only a few minutes job, certainly helped by a proper quality step-drill. And with the new hole in place in the correct position it was time for the final assembly of the heater, fitting the coolant pipes and bulkhead seal plate:


I had hoped that after all the preparations done already this would be straight sailing. It wasn’t, the heater certainly kept the fight up right till the end! Because there was only very little room to manoeuvre, fitting the two short hoses between the heater matrix and the shortened steel pipes took some more time than expected. All rather frustrating. But after almost an hour everything was in place, and ready to be fitted to car.
Again the heater didn’t quite cooperate. But overall this went pretty smooth. I first manoeuvred the heater in place and loosely fixated it with the bolt on top of fresh air inlet.


After that I moved to the engine bay to put the nuts on the three mounting studs.


And finally the two bolts for the brackets on top of the transmission tunnel could be put in position. And with all nuts and bolts in place it was time for a final alignment check after which the nuts and bolts could be torqued down.


And finally a close up of the pipe work:


An afternoon well spend. And with the heater in place I can continue in earnest with some other jobs, to start with the wiring loom that fits around the heater!

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