Make Your Stock Heater Work

So I decided to do something about the anemic heater in my 67. I pulled off the core cover removed the baffle and the vent tube. I popped the spot welds and made a block off plate for that. If you look at the top picture you can see there are two ports in the firewall one for fresh air and one for heat. I took an air chizel to cut the lower edges of the box inside the cab at the corners and bent the lower lip up to open the lower space up to the cabin and block it from the fan. Now the blower circulates back the cabin air and there is no freezing ouside air coming in. When putting the core back in I insulated around it so the air actually flows through it instead of around it. The other thing I did under the dash is to the channel box that comes off the blower and diverts the air to the defrost. There is still a section there with a tube coming up and a flapper directly after it so i can divert the air if i need it but there is no cable hooked up I would just need to reach under the dash for that. And at the end i made a little curve to route the air to blow out from under the dash a bit rather than straight out. Now it works really well! My original plan was to move the entire core inside the cab and build a new box for it but that wasnt nessesary. I would have like to insulate the inside of the heater box but I didnt have anything suitable. If the heate rbelches out hot air in the summer I will come up with a water diverter valve. In the past i have simply unhooked the hoses with a union but a less messy solution would be nice

 

Can you do more pics? Under the hood and how it looks finished?

Do you still have the OEM vacuum controller?

Sounds like a great hack.

 

A better fan makes a huge difference too
"Placebo" heater upgrade

 

I can get more pics. I dont have any vacume controls. Only the electric fan. I may hook up a cable to the defrost flap and run it to the hole where the fresh air flap was that i just removed. I cant say weather it flows better or worse than it did but I dont think it hurt it much if at all. Insulating around the core likely had as much effect as re routing the air. Im sure a better fan would make it even better

 

heated seats anyone?
rostra elements <-Click

 

Heated seats is my plan as I prep Willie for his eventual life in the mountains of CO. I'm even moving to an alternator conversion to make sure I can keep up with the battery needs.

 

I put seat heaters in both of my jeeps. They are awesome! You stay warm even without turning the regular heater on at all.

 

Sorry to rob the thread....
Mike - Which seat heaters are you using?

 

Seat Heater

I used one pair of pads per seat. One for the back and one for the bottom.

 

Best thing since sliced Bread...........

 

You can get a cable operated water shut off valve and or also a 12v servo shut off valve...........either way stopping the hot water from entering the core equals no heat in the summer.......

The cold air intake has always been a problem with that factory heater.........reheating already previously heated air is the way to fly...............good job.

 

Still would like to see more pics.

 

What amp alternator are you running

 

73 amp 10si in one Jeep, 95 amp 12si in the other. The heaters are 10 amps per seat.

 

Not to hitch hike off thread, I have had 3 CJ5s. A '67, and 2 '71s. All 3 bone stock. My '67 sucked for heat. My first '71 and my current '71 had/have awesome heat. Have never had an issue.

 

Heres some more pics you can see where i bent up the bottom of the box in the cab

 

Hi there ! I am looking for the heater box/core for my '71 CJ5... at reasonable price , and I've got a question for you: how do the vacuum controls works ? I mean... from where do the vac come ?
Thanks for help !

 

from FSM

 

It's engine vacuum, from a fitting on the intake manifold.