Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Hello

I am just to refurbish the Heater Box of my +2 S130. Is it right, that the heating is always ON? I dont find a Valve in the hot water hoses. That means that Hot Water from the engine allways run through the Heater BOX. Is this right? As the Temperature an the climate every year rises, i dont want any additional heating in may Car. Has anybody mounted some kind of a valve, and where.

Thanks for your Inputs

Yes, i have added a valve after thermostat

I used a couple of inline ball-o-fix valves to address this.

I fitted a Manual Heater Control Valve from Car Builder Solutions in the heater hose at the thermostat housing end-
https://www.carbuilder.com/uk/15mm-58-h ... GQQAvD_BwE

Alan

All metal

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/fss- ... ZcQAvD_BwE

Don't Plus 2s have a heater valve arrowed? D

No,+2's don't have one...and there isn't,I don't think, room to fit one!

Alan.

Imho leave with original flow through matrix.
Look at heater flaps if function is good.
Alan

Well some do!! D

h20hamelan wrote:All metal

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/fss- ... ZcQAvD_BwE

Using a 5/8” version of this type as well. Mounted it on the firewall. I had a salvaged straight plastic valve before, but this one is more compact to mount on the firewall.

The heater core nipples are 5/8”, whereas the nipple on the thermostat housing is 1/2”. I am trying this Gates 18051 dual diameter heater hose for the transition. Hoping the 12” length is sufficient to reach the thermostat housing when the engine is back in and the radius on the straight hose is OK. We will see shortly, but that’s the plan.

https://www.gates.com/us/en/fluid-power ... 00007.html

I found that a shutoff valve made a significant interior temperature difference, even with freshly restored foam on the heater box flaps. Really helped in Florida and Nevada, but in the Great White North the feature is rarely used.

Well, off to shovel snow again!

I live in a region that is usually very sunny and very warm for most of the year and insufferably hot in the summer. I didn't want the heater to be on all the time either.

My car came with two huge brake-servos, one of which came within an inch of where a heater-valve would connect so was no room. But then I decided to eliminate the servos and that made tons of space. What I used is a valve intended for, of all things, a few American Motors and International Harvester products of the 1960s. It has the right thread size and the right sigot size, is all metal, fairly compact, requires only 1/4 turn to operate, and turns so easily I can open or close it with barely a touch of a single finger. At some point I'll put a cable through to the cockpit for remote-operation, or maybe even piggyback that cable onto the heater controls so that the valve opens whenever I turn up the temperature.

I'm really glad that I installed a valve because I've found that even on chilly days the car is often comfortably warm even with the valve closed, or sometimes with it open but no fan running.

Escorts and Capri’s are set up the same way. No tap for coolant running through the heater core. The coolant flows through the core all the time. Temperature regulation is done by a flap that regulates the amount of ventilation air passing over the core. The system works well in my experience. It may even be better for it to flow all the time so you don’t get localised corrosion in the core from coolant that stagnates

Thanks for this much answers and Solutions. I will now look what kind of valve i can find in Switzerland and mount it bevor summer starts.

If your heater is of the type that was not fitted with a heater tap originally your problem is not that it doesn’t have a heater tap but rather that there is something wrong with the air control flaps or the adjustment of the cables that control them. In other words by fitting a tap you are merely addressing the symptoms not the cause.

Correct.
The problem is the flap controls ( easy fix ) or the flaps themselves ( long, hard job ) , renewing the foam and seals.
the third option is as you say a heater valve..

John