Re: What kind of Hair Dryer for DC Defrost/Heat..

[John Wayland <dat1200@europa.com>]

Hello to All,

evblazer@softhome.net wrote:

> It is getting cold up in CT and my wife wants heat.. When I got the blazer
> it was missing everything under the hood for the ac/heater including the
> blower motor and vents. ...
> I recall reading of people using Hair Dryers and was wondering what kind you
> could use?

Using a hair dryer works, but it's pretty noisy and crude. If you want a cheap but still
effective heater, why not use a ceramic element or two? I found a ceramic type heater at
Home Depot for just $9 and some change, so you could get two of them for under $20! You
could disconnect the wires from the AC fan motors, and separately wire them to a $49
12VDC-120VAC inverter, and have 3kw of instant, very quiet heat. This is enough heat to
roast you out of the cab and make you switch one of them off and just run one once the cab
is warmed up. You could also remove the $9 heater's AC fan motors and get a few surplus
type 12V BDC fans for about $5 each.

Of course, the best way, is to get to a wrecking yard and find the stock factory blower
and duct work, then install the twin ceramic elements where the original heater core was,
so you could have full control over dash vent, defroster vent, or floor vent heated air.

If this doesn't sound right for you and you still want to go the hair dryer route, you'll
need to pick one that has a brushed PM type motor. These are usually the noisiest, as the
tiny motor spins really high RPM. You can tell which hair dryer has this kind of motor,
because you can look into it and see the small diodes that make DC for the motor, and
these of course, will simply pass your EV's battery juice through to the motor. Some of
the more expensive and usually quieter hairdryers have true AC motors to run the fan, and
you'll want to avoid this type for the 'quick and cheap' duty as the heater for use in the
EV.

See Ya.....John Wayland