Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:41:58 -0500
Reply-To: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject: Re: Blue slider vents in doors? 84 GL...wazzit these supposed to
do?
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTikqWeED59zEepHHEPc6m0b4hHFH=cbLowok2jpT@mail.gmail.c om>
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At 01:06 PM 2/28/2011, Don Hanson wrote:
>The Vanagon heating and ventilation system, it's controls, it's basic
>design, the way the heated coolant is routed and the valves that direct it
>all around....it all seems a bit weird to me...It does work, somehow, when
>all is well with the valves and cables and hoses, but you almost seem to
>need an Ouiji Board to un-ravel how they were thinking when they built this
>system.
I don't understand. Seems to me it works about the way pretty much
all non-luxury cars did until the Japanese introduced the
single-lever integrated control for airflow. Most people (most
Americans, anyway) would find the levers more intuitive if pushing
them to the right made everything increase instead of the upper two
increasing and the lower two decreasing; but what the levers
themselves do couldn't possibly be simpler.
One opens the flap to the defrost vents.
One opens the flap to the footwell vents.
One opens the flap to the little overhead rear vents.
And one turns on the hot water.
They operate entirely independently; if you want lots of air to come
out of one set of holes, leave the other ones shut.
The heater(s) get first crack at the warming coolant coming from the
engine as it comes up to temperature, so they don't have to wait for
the thermostat before they begin generating heat.
Somebody in Deutschland decided you needed to be able to get maximum
windshield defrost while blind drunk and wearing mittens - that's the
only reason the lever directions seem odd. Personally I think that
was a dumb choice, but the panel itself is clearly marked with the
direction of increase for each air lever, by means of a long thin
triangle (just like the Japanese of the time). The later ones have
MAX printed at the big end of the triangle for people who can't take a hint.
The defrost lever has a picture of a defrosting windshield at the max end.
The temp lever has a blue dot at the left and a red dot at the right,
and a symbol of heat rising at the hot end.
The footwell air lever has an arrow pointing down (all right, it's a
triangle) at the max end, pretty stylized notion of an arrow.
And the rear air lever is marked all in blue to symbolize that only
cold air will come out, with another very stylized symbol of a vent
at the max end, or maybe four vents. I think one person did the
symbols for the top two and an abstract painter the symbols for the bottom two.
Still! I maintain that anyone who without even reading the book
looks at that panel and thinks about it for a few minutes, then turns
on the fan and moves the levers a couple times should be able to
operate it correctly - with the possible exception of the rear air
lever. But even with that one, listening to the fan will tell you
that it's turning air on and off to *some place,* and the blue color
tells you it's cold air.*
*That doesn't mean that the Japanese symbology and single-lever
system aren't wonderful engineering and ergonomics, they are; nor
that VW couldn't have set things up better. But the best I can
remember, every car I ever drove and the vast majority of the ones I
rode in starting with our '52 Ford Tudor up until I had the
misfortune to drive a '76 Subaru** had heater controls just like the
Vanagon except that all the levers pointed the same way.
**The air handling was great, but even though the temperature control
had four inches of travel it was essentially binary. Much worse, the
driver's shoulder belt reel was mounted at exactly the height of my
funny bone. It was my parent's car and I probably only drove it
fifty times, but my elbow still hurts when I think of it.
I think people have gotten so used to the single-lever systems that
they freak when they see more than one lever, and stop thinking. But
that's only my hypothesis attempting to explain what to me is
mysterious: why does this utterly simple system baffle people? For
sure it does.
He said plaintively...
And speaking of mysteries...my '84 manual thought the rear running
light was a combination stop/tail light. So does my '89 manual, and
I'll bet the '91 manual does too. How could that happen?
Yrs,
David
