Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 14:03:24 -0400
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: smitht@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca (Tim Smith)
Subject: Heat/Hot Showers Cheap!
Thanks to Tom Forhan for inspiring this idea.
All 2.1l wasserboxers have an oil/water heat exchanger neatly sandwiched
between the oil filter and the block. It is about 4"x4"by 2" thick, with an
inlet and outlet pipe, 16mm ID. It is spliced into the coolant loop to keep
the oil temps down. Wasserboxers thus have a built-in waterheater! The
price for one of these units rebuilt is $157Cdn and I would bet it could be
fitted to maybe all vanagons and loafs! Filters all look to have the same
mounts.
Options are:
1) Heating shower water - bypass the regular coolant loop with a tube splice
and connect new tubes to a 5gal insulated tank, under the bench or in the
wardrobe, or even use the existing water tank. If the tank was high enough
above the oil cooler then thermo-siphoning should be possible, just bring
one pipe well up into the tank, for 'hot in' and take the return off low.
High tech option, install a thermostat in the water tank to control a
circulation pump. Don't know how big a boost the oilcooler gives in cooling
the oil, none of the 1.9l engines have them, but you still get (some)
cooling via the shower water.
2) Aircooleds get wasserboxer heating system - worried about oil temps?
added an extra cooler to foolishly squander that heat on the great outdoors?
Recycle it into your bus! Oil cooler unit, vanagon rear heater unit, some
tubing, and a small water tank with pressure relief valve should do it. A
water temp gauge might be nice for info. Water tank could be a vanagon main
coolant reservoir with cap, and get the overflow reservoir too, in case it
boils over! I bet about an hour in a junkyard and <$100 would get nearly
all the parts you need, including the dash switch. A circulation pump would
likely be needed. Tieing in a large storage tank would get you the shower
option. :)
Some ideas for you to ponder, rub-a-dub-Vdub. The Australian camper
conversion company Trakka use a metal tubing coil inside the 50litre hot
water tank to run hot coolant through and heat their shower stuff, takes 20
minutes at idle to get hot water 'they say'. This could be spliced into the
rear heater loop and controlled by its valve. Simple enough to run piping
over to the water tank in a Westy and put the coil inside via the big
cleanout lid.
Tim Smith
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