So the heater will be inside the car? Any concerns about fumes? There has to be some odor or toxic smells coming out of that thing.
Yes - the heater will be IN the car, behind the back seat.
No - there should not be any fumes provided that the intake and exhaust for combustion are correctly routed out of the passenger compartment & that they are sealed/gasketed correctly to the outside world. At first I thought that only the combustion exhaust would have to be routed outside, but it turns out that smoke from unburnt gas can creep out of the combustion fan inlet when the heater is off & cooling down. This was observed yesterday.
There are essentially 2 'circuits' that air moves along in the heater. They are completely isolated & distinct from each other:
1) Combustion air flow -> Air enters the combustion blower airhorn and is compressed via a small blower (motor #1). It is transported to the combustion chamber via an air hose. The combustion chamber gets hot. Exhaust from combustion exits via an exhaust pipe outside of the vehicle.
2) Heated air flow -> Ambient air from inside the car is sucked over the OUTSIDE of the hot combustion chamber (combustion chamber is closed, open cylindrical shroud/tube goes around closed combustion chamber) and hot air is sucked into squirrel heater blower housing (motor #2). Hot air exits the 3.5" diameter opening. This is where I will route the 3.5" hose under the package tray into a Y pipe to distribute hot air into the stock heater channels.
In my research I found out that this unit is 13,000 BTU. The one for Busses & Things are 20,000 BTU. Quite a bit more heat than a BN2 Espacher (6500 BTU) that would have been a factory option for my car. I also found a guy that put one of these in the package tray area of his Ghia. He was able to tee off of the stock fuel lines, since his car is not fuel injected. It's safer/easier in the long run for me to run a low pressure (5-7psi) supply & return line than try to step down the high pressure (40-60psi) FI lines.
I like the idea of having hot air distributed to all points in the car. The dealer installed version just blows heat at your feet after you hack a big hole in the trunk. I'm trying to minimize holes and hacking...while improving/maintaining functionality of the heating system. Right now my heater boxes have pin-holes in them. Rather than replace them and use the for a short time, I'm just going to setup the gas heater and turn my attention to the new engine setup, which cannot accomodate the stock heater boxes.
I'm going to order up all of the goodies today. Looks like Summit & McMaster-Carr should have everything I need to do it right.
-Brady