TVR Griffith: location heater blower

[rowald]

Hi All,

I just bought a 4.3 Griffith '93. It is a LHD car, with the heater matrix on the right side, built in the panel. There is no fan built in, as far as I can see. On this forum I found another topic, explaining that the fan/blower should be located in the space beneath the righ headlamp, but it is not.......
Maybe the wrong heater system was mounted to this car by one of the previous owners. However, is there a heater system having an embedded blower, just behind the heater matrix, inside the car? I would appreciate to see some pictures, please advise.
Rowald

[Ant.]

On a precat car the heater blower should be under the headlamp.I presume you have removed the headlamp pod to look?
Has the car got the normal precat heater controls on the centre dash?

[rowald]

I did not remove the headlamp pod, as the prvious owner told me there is nothing like a blower in there.
On the dash are just the two switches operating the servo's : flap control window/floor and heater valvecontrol.
If the previous owner is wrong: is it just a matter of cutting the mountingkit to remove the headlamp?
Should there also be a hose in the sidewing from the blower towards the heater matrix, and if yes, is there should there be an adapter connecting teh hose to the heatermatrix?
Thanks,
Rowald

[SSPPGG]

if you remove the panel in the wheel arch, you can see the fan assembly in the light pod, but to access it, the lights have to be removed.

[Hedgehopper]

Not sure if both these pics. are of the same car but they might help you.

[Barreti]

Nice find Hedgehopper. I can tell you the cars aren't the same because the second pic is mine of my Sapphire Blue car

Rowald - first of all WELCOME and congratulations on having one of the best cars England ever made

You should be able to tell if your heater motor is under a headlight pod if you can get under the front of the car.

Behind the mouth opening is a much bigger opening underneath the car, usually covered by a mesh grille
You will probably need to take this mesh grille off because I don't think you can see through the opening in the front.

With the mesh off you can get your head in and see the sides of the wing behind the headlight.
You might find a very roughly cut 10cm hole in one of the wings. This is where the motor sucks air in.
Here is what mine looked like with the motor out (Front of the car is on the left, you can just see the back of the indicator. The engine bay would be at the top of the picture - so this is the near/passenger side in a UK RHD car)


MAKE SURE THE MOTOR IS SWITCHED OFF BEFORE DOING THIS NEXT BIT ...

Stick your fingers in the hole and see if you can feel either the round casing or fins of the motor.
If you can feel lots of fins then you have your hand inside the motor. Its like you are putting your hand into a small washing machine.
This is the best picture I have of it, its rubbish I know but you can see the outer casing of the fan and the fins to the right of the two vertical wires.

Edited by Barreti on Thursday 1st March 13:16

[TVRVixenV8]

The pics from hedgehopper are the correct ones, it looks exactly like it looks in my 4.3 Griffith from 1993, only thing to change is the LH to RH. The blower is underneath the left front light, easy to see when the car is on a car lift.
The blower in my car was down, fitted a new one but these system of blowing into the inner front right wing is bullsh... ! :-( Haven't got an idea how to improve it

[Barreti]

TVRVixenV8, sadly this site isn't the easy to use technical forum it once was since they removed the Search function, or you would be able to find posts relating to improvements which can be made to the heater blower.

This for instance



Ant made significant improvements to his pre-cat ventilation system by changing the blower to the later 500 type bolted directly to the matrix.

And someone else (I can't remember who so my apologies if you're looking in) ran pipes from the blower right through the wing and up to the vents.
It was a big discussion subject a couple of years ago.

Edited by Barreti on Thursday 1st March 13:28

[TVRVixenV8]

Did it nearly the same way like these pics show, using a pipe to run the air into the inner wing. But i can't lead it up to the heater unit in the passenger foot/dash area, there is no access without cutting a big hole where the small flex hose to the dash vent is plugged in.

[Ant.]

Close Ian, I talked about fitting a 500 blower system, and I have done it to one car. But it is a real pain in the arse.

I fitted a hose all the way from the blower to the matrix, my ventilation whistles now to the screen.

[TVRVixenV8]

that's the new blower in my Griff:

Edited by TVRVixenV8 on Thursday 1st March 19:22

[Russell Mc]

Ant. said:

Close Ian, I talked about fitting a 500 blower system, and I have done it to one car. But it is a real pain in the arse.

I fitted a hose all the way from the blower to the matrix, my ventilation whistles now to the screen.

So is the problem of the blower being weak due to gaps/leaks in the joins in the pipework leading to the heater matrix? So by running one single hose from the blower to the matrix should significantly improve the heater? I can't even de-mist the screen at the moment.

[Barreti]

Yes, thats exactly the problem.

But, if you haven't had a look at the way the factory designed this let me tell you its beyond laughable.

The void under your headlight is divided into two horizontally using a piece of leatherette glued into place.
The blower motor sits in the bottom half underneath the leatherette and its outlet pokes through a hole into the top half.
So its sucking air in from the bottom of the void, through a hole hacked cut through the inner wing, and pushing it into the top of the void which is supposedly pressurising it so the only way it can escape is out of the vents.

Ridiculous no?!

Which is why a few of us pre-cat owners have looked at ways of sorting it out properly.
Ant has had by far the best results I've heard of, though god only knows how he got that pipe through.
I'm sure he has a trained ferret for some of these jobs

[rowald]

Guys, thank you for all the comments! I'm very supprised this forum is so lifely. You should understand I just bought this car, and as I had several (oldtimer) sportcars earlier, I could not have any idea that the heater blower was designed this way. I even thought the heater shouldn't be in the sidewing, because where should the blower be? I thought the previous owner just did some amaturistic (yes'I'm from Holland) DIY fixing another heater in it. Something from a Volkswagen, ha ha...
The previous owner also made some holes in the sidewings (with 'nice' Landrover side grills mounted as a cover). My plan was to fix those holes and respray the front and sidewings of the car, in order to get the car in original state again. However, due to these holes, I have sufficient space to enter a heaterblower, and mount it directly to the heater matrix. I found the wires going to the front of the car are in the same wing, so I assume I can tap (?) the wires which operate the blower from there. There is a huge plug in there, containing approx 15 leads.....does anyone know the colourcoding of the wires????? I expect to receive the Haynes bible by post next day, but I'm wondering if the wiring diagrams are in there.

Thank you all very much, I'll show the result when I'm finished, and send some pic's, as long as you promise to tell nobody that I'm driving a car with holes in the wings!
Regards,
Rowald