The Testarossa heater thread!

Well I learnt a few new things today. I have manufactured a new passenger side air deflector and today fitted it to the heater. With both motors off I needed to know which set of wires was left and which were right so I hooked them up and watched the flap motors work.

Quite interesting that the flap motors have no limit switch on them. I mean, you push the rocker switch and watch the LEDs move one way or the other, but when you actualy do this and watch the flap, it gets a lot of force applied to it from the motor. The two halves of the vent are like a clamshell in configuration, held together by a few drops of some sort of glue. Not very strong. The flap motor actually pushes so hard on thes two shells that on a stock heater box, the floor vents actually can crack apart just from the pressure applied by the rotating steel flap.

Makes me wonder if this is why so many TR's have either broken or missing floor vents with the flaps simply spinning in mid air.

I'll post up some images of the passenger side vent that I manufactured before fitting it into the car. Today was another day spent with fibreglass but much more difficult as I'm trying to fabricate the drivers side floor vent from the images posted by Shamile.

Stay tuned!

 

Here's the passenger side vent.

I got some kids putty from the toy shop and made a two part mould then used fibreglass with liberal amounts of resin to create this shape. Then out with the dremel for some very carefull grinding to get the shape right. Worked out pretty well but too time intensive. But now at least both cars have perfect passenger side floor vents with fully operational flaps.
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Next it was on to the drivers side. Thanks to Shamille I had a bit of an idea of what it was supposed to look like, but it appears that there are very few drivers side vents that are actually intact, or if they are, nobody could send me an image of an intact unit to study.

Here's where the vent needs to fit:
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As can be seen, there is very little room to fit the vent in and it's a totally different shape to the passenger side.

I started out with some solid foam block that I got from a florist. I shaped this to fit into the base of the vent which actually attaches to the heater box and holds the motor. This is the part that we all should have and it will be pretty much intact.

After shaping the foam to the required shape I started to lay up the fibreglass over it. Once I had a couple of good solid layers then I removed the foam and did the same thing on the inside. After each layer dried I got the grinder out and redid the shape to keep it flat and to maintain the correct size. It's a right PITA, but I had no other way to do it. The garage is full of fibregalss grinding dust as it creates a right bloody mess everywhere.

Finally I was pretty happy with the shape and it was then out with the dremel and hand cut the grooves to the inside so it fitted together with the existing part as they overlap each other along the join line. This was probably the hardest part as both sides needed to be perfectly parallel and if you cut too far, you had to go back and build it up again, then wait till that dried, then do it again...and again............aaaggghhhh!!!!!!

So it took two days to make the first vent but as can be seen, it fits very well to the original heater part and the flap opens and closes fully. All in all a good result. Just needs a coat of black paint to make it look 'factory' and put it into the car.

Now I just have to make another one for the other car!! Shhheeeess!!
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It was really difficult to make the first one of these vents. Mostly to maintain a squareness as the fibreglass shrinks and moves a lot as the additional layers are added to make the required thickness.

One morning whilst sitting having breakfast and reading the drivel on the cereal box, I had an idea. After tossing the cornflake (minus box) back into the pantry, I headed for the garage with cornflack box in hand. I cut up the box to the required shape and used the foam just to maintain some solidity for the first coat. Then I layed two layers over the light cardboard cereal box, letting the resin soak fully into the material and the cardboard.

Once this went off, I repeated the same on the flip side until the thickness was attained. Then I went to work with the dremel tool to create the grooves and fine shape. Then to perfect the whole thing I used some fibreglass reinforced automotive filler (bog) and laid a fine layer over inner out outer. Once sanded back, this gave a really great result, very square edged and an even better fit that the first one.

So now put away in the cupboard are a spare fibreglass floor vent for both drivers and passenger sides and a full set are now fitted into my car and operating perfectly.
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