When you turn on the heater blower, you will probably draw about 10 amps at max position. This means you will be consuming about 12 x 10 = 120 watts of electrical power. 1 HP is 746 watts, depending on the unit system, so your fan is consuming about 1/6 of a HP which even for the Vanagons engine is not that much. The heater core is probably capable of rejecting about 25% of the engines heat so by using the heater fan you can easily make the difference of overheating an engine or not overheating it. A good chunk of the energy from gasoline is turned into heat with a combustion engine. Very roughly speaking, a 100 HP engine can produce more than 60 HP in heat loss which your radiator system has to reject. At that rate your heater core can reject 15 HP. These are really really round numbers so dont be tempted to take me to task over efficiencies etc. I am attempting to show how effective using the heater fan can be to cool an engine. Not sure about the Vanagon set-up but most vehicles have the heater plumbed into the water system upstream of the thermostat so if the thermostat is defective and wont open, using the heater at full blast can allow you to gently drive somewhere for help. Hope this is clear, Steve Cotsford |
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