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Cabin heater & hose connections

Despite the standard Mini cabin heater & fan not being overly powerful, it's effective enough to keep the cabin warm on a cold morning/day. It is a legal requirement to have heated airflow to the window demister vents so for those two reasons, the standard heater will be retained and reinstalled.

The problem I had was that the hose connections from Starlet engine coolant piping are 16mm and the Mini heater matrix piping 1/2" so some adapters were required. The standard Mini heater hoses enter/exit the cabin area through an opening at the top of the firewall and I figured that was as good a place as any to mount the adapters.

I purchased some 16mm steel tube and welded together some 90 degree pieces. There's no a lot of coolant flow through the heater hoses so instead of using sweep bends, I felt a 90 degree elbow like this was suitable.

I then made a pair of 16mm to 1/2" adapter pieces on the lathe (with some beads machined into them) and welded them onto the above 90deg 16mm elbows


With the hoses slipped onto the tube, I felt they looked a bit unfinished so I made a pair of small hose covers welded them to the tubes. The end of the hose slips into this cover and gives a nice finished look to the hose connection. I also formed some beads on the end of the tube.

The adapter pieces were then welded to a 2mm steel plate which covers the opening used for the factory Mini hoses, made to be a similar shape as the original cover plate that was installed there. To indicate the coolant flow direction from the engine, I stamped the plate with "IN" & "OUT". The IN hose comes from the thermostat housing and the OUT hose leads to a port behind the water pump.



Comments

  1. Love the hose covers - a very neat solution :)

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