Heater Problems

[Sim North East]

I have just got an Elise (3 years old 16K) and the heater knob will not turn (the one that controls the direction of the heat). The fans come on but there is not a great deal coming out of them, having said that they are clearing my windows. What can be done?

Thanks

Mark

[bogie]

its a common prob - get both the front service panels off, and on the heater box you will see a linkage - spray some lube on this, and work it free whilst someone else is turning the knob. Once its freed up, stick some grease on it.

when the fan is on full, you should just be able to feel a slight draught on your hand at about 2" away - thats as powerful as it gets and perfectly normal! ...it makes a lot of noise but is p*ss poor on cars without aircon...the aircon cars have much better fans

[Arno]

Output from the heater can also be 'optimised' a bit if you make sure that the aluminium pipe is seated properly on both the heater box *and* the connection to the dash.

If it's not attached properly then you'll be blowing (hot) air out where you don't want it...

I also wrapped the pipe in some nylon/fleece type stuff to keep heat loss down.

Also I found that when I removed my dash top that the connection between the lower half of the dash where the heater pipe comes in and the upper part which houses the window vents didn't really fit that well and the tiny seal used by Lotus was just dangling uselessly. (inside the dash was about 1/2 the sahara desert of sand and dead bugs as a result...)

I added some self-adhesive neoprene strips around the connection point, so now at least pretty much all the air that's sent to the dash vents actually gets there!!

Useless trivia, but inf you remove the S2 dash top you'll notice that it actually has window demist channels right at the front where the air comes out if you close the dash top vents.

Unfortunately they are positioned so that they have a snowball's chance in hell to actually do something useful.. The most they seem to manage is clear a tiny strip of about 2 inches on the window right above the dash..

Bye, Arno.