Murray,

You have a great memory. We have the Real Deal it's a Smith's Heater . It is an under rear seat auxilary heater sold for the Mini at the time.

It is still in the garage.

The best thing for a Mini in the winter is to block off the grille.

In ice racing we did two things to be able to see. We rerouted the windshield washer fluid over the heater hose. Using 5 feet of extra tube wrapped with duct tape to hold it in place. The fluid passed over and around the heater hose behind the head and was warmed to 195f. Resulting in hot ww fluid being sprayed on the windshield. Melting the ice instantly.

We also ran a tube to the rear drivers bucket. In which we placed a one gallon container of WW winter fluid. The tube ran into the container  thru a hole drilled in the cap. Thereby increasing the ww fluid reservoir by 1000%. To refill the container we simply put a full new replacement and exchanged the fancy cap system. 

We never had to pull over on the road to refill the system.

Of course we also had engine block heaters and an internal electric space heater fan that went on at 6 a.m. to make the trip to work enjoyable.

I miss driving a Mini in winter but I don't miss going to work!

Canadian tire sells a windshield washer heater system. It fits over the 2" heater hose on bigger cars.

We just changed the heater rad on our GMC van for the second time in two years. The other two were defective. Now we finally have real heat.

Throw your jacket on the back seat heat!!

It's winter here and the roads are frozen and it's like driving on cobblestones.

"Katie Riley" is tucked under her car cover with a sheet of plastic on top incase the GT5 racer  parked on top of her springs a leak.

Deb

I run my stock fresh air type, i re-stored, and it will run you out of the car. No Kidding, on a couple Very Cold Turkey Runs, I had to turn it off! I have fun actually restoring them. I have one that just sold the other day, and need to ship it out. I also have quite a few front panels and ears to do this weekend. Thanks for the good word Mur.

Factories in Ontario and Michigan building domestic cars, yes.  Factories in England, not so much.  A small block chevy takes the same size thermostat.  I think my dad first had both internal and underhood heater fans on a daily driver in 1972, a 998 Cooper IIRC.

Sliding window cars are much harder to heat with all of their air leaks and door gaps.

KD from the Mainly Minis Montreal club has an auxilliary heater that used to be sold for minis, likely an item from the 60s mini aftermarket boom.  It is very well built, and probably hasn't moved since I last worked on a car in their garage 19 years ago.

The worst heaters of any car were in the early bug V W's-one hand on the steering wheel and the other trying to keep the frost off the inside of the windscreen with a scraper-

BIG AL

mur that's a good idea with the thermostat.  Was that ever done factory?

Alex is so much nicer at saying things than I am, so I waited for him to bring up the impracticality of such a heater.  Looking at their site, they claim to have the smallest heater in the world, though Princess Auto here in Canada sell an auxilliary heater that appears to be smaller.  I suppose it looks nice, but I think mac man ron manages to make heaters for minis look very nice.

I daily drove minis through nearly 25 Saskatchewan winters, and my favorite is the MK IV Canadian Mini 1000 item, with the external fan, with an internal fan from an earlier heater added to the actual heater unit; or simply an earlier MK III heater.  A proper 195 F thermostat, without any goofy bleeder float things, holes drilled, extra big valves, etc. will keep the engine warm and able to feed hot coolant to the heater.  There is no point in running any coolant to the radiator till the engine is up to temp.

I once put a second heater under the rear seat of a mini.  That car was warm!  In -40F weather the engine would only warm to about 160F and all of the heat went into the inside of the car.  At those temperatures, you see modern cars that are unable to keep the windows clear, yet I would still be able to roll down the highway in a T-shirt, no frost on any windows.

Folks who say that minis have poor heaters are as unreliable as the folks who perpetuate the Lucas Prince of Darkness crap.

I'll ask Adam at T7 to respond to you guys.  Hope it's OK with MM... I was hoping MM would start to carry the T7 products.

I may be looking at the pictures and description wrong, but nowhere does it appear to be a fresh-air heater - all this will do is warm up and stir the fug in the cabin.

The factory moved away from recirc heaters to fresh-air for a reason...

I too may be interested in one, please email me the details

Ryan

Air2air-

I could be interested in one- Can you contact me and let me know what l have to do to get in on the "group buy"

BIG AL-

[email protected]

A MOASF member, Colin, pointed out these new British heaters for classic cars.  They're about half the size of a mini heater and work twice as well.  We're doing a group buy on them.

Adam at T7 does not have a US distributor yet, so I said I'd put it here on the top US mini forum in the hopes that a certain Mr. Racine might be interested:

3.5kw Lightweight Heater with Side Vents

£97.92 Ex VAT
£117.50 Inc VAT

Email from Adam (the owner):

Glad to see they are gaining interest from overseas!

For the Mini I would recommend this heater:

//www.t7design.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=65&products_id=310

This unit is ideal for Mini's as it has open/closable vents at the bottom for heating the interior/foot well area, and also outlets of various sizes to match the diameter of ducting you have leading up to your demister vents.

You guys wouldn’t need to buy many other parts to get this working, these are not essentially but some customers may want them:

1/2" - 1/2" bulkhead hose adapter, they look neat and also offer a sealed way for the hoses to pass through the firewall/bulkhead.

Heater Ducting, some customers may want to get rid of the old ducting, especially if its damaged or broken over time.

I would avoid buying heater hose from me, its heavy and massively pushes up the cost of shipping.

If you guys have any more questions please don't hesitate to drop me a line! I am also on Skype: 'T7Design' so if anyone on the Mini forums want to chat about the products they can do so for free if they use Skype too.