Re: Heater question


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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [108.162.245.55] on Monday, February 27, 2017 at 00:37:29 :

In Reply to: Heater question posted by Tim Holloway [108.162.219.223] on Sunday, February 26, 2017 at 20:50:42 :

As far as I know, all the old rigs that had more than one blower speed used an external resistor mounted either on the switch or somewhere behind the dash. Military heaters had an external ceramic resistor, about 25 watt rating, with brown glaze over the coil. Civilian resistors weren't so fancy. I've found that for a 2-speed heater, an ignition ballast resistor (about 1 ohm) gives a reasonable "low" speed and is easy to mount and can handle the wattage needed. I bought an aftermarket "universal" heater a while back that actually had a multi-speed motor with 5 wires coming out of it and a switch to select them. On newer rigs, up until fairly recently (now it's all electronic), heater resistors were often open wire coils hidden inside the heater plenum. That allowed them to get away with a smaller coil, since the air flow kept it cool. In theory, it would also put the dissipated heat to good use.

I find 2 heater speeds are enough, which also makes it possible to use a rugged on-off-on toggle switch rather than a rotary switch, which tend to be more fragile and harder to connect to. If you want to get fancy, you can get continuously variable speed controllers off of ebay straight from China for $10 or so. I haven't tried using one yet. I like to keep things simple.




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