Bumper and Heat!

The last weekend before the big trip to Norfolk, we obviously needed to attach the bumper (which was held on before with some vice grips).  I also wanted to see if we could get some of the hot air cycling through the heat exchanger to be pumped to the front.

[thanks Atwell]

This "CampMobile" version of the bus came with the optional gas heater.  I was very wary of keeping it in the system from the get go seeing how much rust was on it, and wanted to avoid a "plugin and see if it works" attempt.  Well I removed it one night when it was on the lift, which was a good thing... busting open a duct line out came mouse nestings, pencils, a battery, and some old coins, probably not good stuff to have in a red-hot gasoline-fed heater box (imagine the black smoke pouring into the cabin).

[Thanks Frank]

So instead we're going for the stock design of the van system (or close to it) for non-Camp Mobile versions.  This system consists of basically just using the engine fan and a supplementary blower to rush air over the manifold heat exchangers and bring it to the front of the van.  Conclusions later in this post...

First,  The Bumper!

When we were reinforcing the engine cradle Uncle Chris had bought some bolts to hang the bumper from, but unfortunately I found these too short, so I got some carriage bolts (extra long).  Note that the welded short bolt is not for the bumper as I later found out, there should be another hole closer to the rear which I had to drill in this case because that metal is our reinforcement.

 This is cool.  This is a trick I learned from installing hitches on trucks at work.  If you wrap some wire around the threads on the bolt, you can feed the wire through the hole and pull the bolt through.  Works like a charm, but had to find some wire first...

Here's the rear tire that was on Joe's Jeep Liberty in the house fire... Lots of steel belts to use!

Anyway here's a shot of the new carriage bolts holding up the bumper.  I left Chris' shorty bolt since I think in the future I will cut and weld some more of that angle metal and bolt it below all three bolts.  We'd like to eventually have the option to tow a little trailer so that's a project down the road.  For now I'm OK with the bumper as is (as long as no idiot tow truck thinks it's a tow point).

Heat!
As said before we're going for a return to non-campmobile stock heat more or less.  For simplicity sake I decided to bypass the rear heat vent as well as the driver's floor vents and just see how it performed with full pressure to the dash vents (defrost?).

More casserole dish fabricating (from the junk lying around the house fire).  Here we're making a cover for the heat exchanger to engine block air duct.

More or less...

Before running any new ducts, I really wanted to try and take care of some of the rust that formed on the underbody here.  Yes it was painted, but was not sprayed with undercoat as other parts of the van were, probably because of the high heat generated from the gas heater.  Anyway, some wire brush sanding...

Idea is to slow the rust at least (sprayed with rubberized undercoating...)

Here is the inlet duct for the defroster (front of van).  Idea is to improve heat but also work on the "tin can" condition of the van.  Insulation should help heat, sound, we'll see.  Experimented with some expanding foam, and well as long as it is applied slowly it sticks to the rubber undercoating no prob.  I guess I'd like to coat a lot of the van with this stuff.  Been told it shouldn't absorb water over time, and there's a version that is fire-resistant (worth the extra $3 a can?)

The Home Depot HVAC duct department has 3" or 4" sizes, this 4" adapter fit snugly over the stock pipe after some wraps of tape (guess aluminum foil or something would have been a bit better than electrical tape).

3-inch HVAC aluminum duct can easily cinch down on the 2 3/4" front inlet.

25' of duct cost about $13, had some problems feeding it through the stock hole (had to sort of twist it).  I was actually pretty impressed with the amount of abuse it could handle and not tear, and given the cost and wide availability I'm not really worried about it tearing (we later put the massive skid plate up for the mid section of the van).

Just used some heavy wire to hang the duct where needed.

Because we were one week away from a road trip and the heater cables hadn't arrived (and it was getting late in the day), I just used some of this duct (had an extra 15') to connect the heat exchangers to the in-pipes.  This is usually where the heater valves go.  Since we will want heat for the next few months (and not cool air), I'll have time later to install the valves and solid pipes (where it's hot).  This pure aluminum duct pipe seems to have no prob with high temps of heat exchanger boxes.

Joe had previously welded some flexible exhaust pipe onto the stock valves.  This actually fits perfectly also into the heater boxes, but will require some welding, or some other seal that will make the manifolds easier to remove if necessary.

Here's a shot at work of the newly painted skid plate covering the central area of the duct.

We had disassembled the auxiliary blower motor and lubricated it once before to get it running again without pulling massive amps, so I also decided to over the inlet with some screen (as you guessed, from the house)...

Also cut some more trays up for some sheet metal patching.

Holes under the bench seat...

No more...  Maybe I'll caulk it from the other side when I feel like it (and yeah, black anti-rust paint is all I got right now :)

Conclusions!
Well as I guessed when I first saw how the stock heating system was setup using an air intake right above the motor (but also directly from the cooling fan), the air that comes out of the ducts smells a little like, well, engine.  I'm pretty confident that the heat exchangers are not internally leaking exhaust fumes and that the exhaust pipe is beyond the intake enough to not circulate CO into the cabin.  If possible I'd really like to make some sort of fresh cold air intake to both the engine fan and the aux fan, but might be impossible or not improve the smell much.

At high engine RPM and with the aux fan running you get about as much flow out of the defrost front vents as a modern car on maybe med setting. It's not a rush of air by no means but you can feel it coming out and it definitely does help.  I'm also impressed at how fast you can get hot air, the manifold/heat exchanger boxes heat up pretty fast so you do get warm air faster than a coolant-driven heater core.

We bought a 300-watt 12V electric heater for eventually using it at night off of our deep cycle batteries and may go totally electric heat for normal use (because my girlfriend complains about the smell).  As for now, heat with some smell is better than nothing.  I think I would have considered hooking up the smaller pipe that feeds the driver floor as our feet get pretty cold given all the holes around the pedals and other drafts.

Warmin' up!