You are missing a lot. All air going through the heater is "Outside"
air. That plate does two things, one it provides restriction to as too
much outside air will never be heated. It also ensures the air contacts
the entire core to get all of the heat off the core. It makes most of
the air travel up-down, for maximum contact time. As cheap as VW is, if
it wasn't needed, it probable wouldn't be there. As for heater
performance, max heating is not obtained with the fan on high speed.
Speed 2 will probably warm the van the fastest. Note the drawings no the
right of the heater levers, max. defrost fan speed 2.

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM] On Behalf
Of Joachim Preiss
Sent: Sunday, December 15, 2002 10:05 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: front heater core flow restriction

Volks, worked my way to the front heater fan in my '85 Westfalia 1.9 WBX
checking out why it wasn't working. Found the fan completely rusty and
dead.
Hardly turns by hand. Anyways, as I was taking the heater core out of
the
flap housing, I found a square piece of sheet metal with 3 dozen holes
in it
covering 2/3 of the height of the core. Obviously an airflow restrictor.
I
think it was on the output side of the core, because there was dust and
sand
and dead bugs trapped underneath. My fan's been dead a long time, and I
don't remember really what the output was, but is it ever enuff? And
when
it's cold why would you want to restrict the output of your front
heater?!
So I've kinda decided to leave that restrictor out when I put it back
together with a new fan, but I wanted to ask the list for input maybe I
am
missing something.

Thanks as always. Frohe Weihnachten!
 Joachim

 '85 Westfalia 1.9 WBX 'Spielmobil'
 [mailto:spielmobil@earthlink.net}