I can get hot from the dash vents if I turn it up high enough, and I mean properly hot. It's just when it mixes, it doesn't do a very good job on the face vents.

I think I'm going to just live with it and stick with the screen/feet setting - that works well enough, and I really can't be arsed taking the whole dash out again.

Besides, I've spotted a new coolant leak this morning, and the EAS compressor keeps running at idle, stopping, then starting, repeat... so I have new issues to look at.

Been playing around with the spare heater box and checking the flaps on the one in the car. I think this is just the way it is, annoyingly.

More cold air ends up going to the face vents in the dash because of the way the blend flaps are arranged. This effect is made worse by the fixed speed air conditioning. Say you have the air set to face/feet, interior is warm, the blend motors have backed off slightly. Firstly, more cold air is ending up at the dash vents, and then the A/C compressor engages again - the cold air suddenly gets quite a bit colder again, and the air from the dash vents feels quite a lot cooler. Meanwhile, the air still going to the footwells is still warm, because where it exits in the heater box has encouraged more mixing... Set it to feet/screen position and this is less noticeable, because the screen outlet is near the footwell outlet.

I suppose this is just a bit of a 'me' problem as I like the air at the face/feet position all year round once things are demisted, and while in Summer it can't be cold enough, in winter its a bit annoying as on hi/hi, it does become an oven pretty quickly. I want to be warm, not on fire.

For anyone that hasn't seen inside one, here is half of a heater box. To the left you have the footwell outlet, then the screen outlet, and the dash/face vents on the right. Blend flap right in the middle, where you can sort of see how the cold air meets the heated air coming around the core, and I'm presuming they sort of blow against each other. The probe stuck in the box in various places seems to agree. It just doesn't mix well, but I can't think of how I'd encourage it to without adding something that would likely obstruct either the blend or distribution flaps.

I've thought about it... but I don't want a battery permanently in the load space, and I don't think I can quite squeeze one in the space next to the LPG tank :(

I'd be happy with 90ma, but on a day like today I was getting 15 tops, which isn't worth the hassle.

And that 90 was under really intense lighting - though I know bugger all beyond that.

I'm thinking of just sitting a spare battery in the boot and plugging it into my constant 12v socket. Put a freshly charged battery in there and that should extend the length of time I can leave it. If the car is parked up for quite a while, I'll just swap the battery with another charged one. I'll put a 10amp fuse on it just in case I forget to unplug it when cranking, to stop the starting power being pulled through its relatively puny wiring, or equally a lot of charge current being dumped through it.

Nope. Still going cold up top. Dash will have to come out again. Even if I set the air to only come out of the dash, it stays cool, yet the blend flaps don't move. So something must be cocked up inside the box.

Yeah, the short circuit current of this one is listed as 610ma... I've just held it right under some marine T5 lighting and managed to get it to top out at 90ma.

Cheap rubbish perhaps.

Well then, I think this plan is a bit of a non-starter.

Tested the current produced by the 10w panel today in typical British winter conditions - overcast but fairly bright. 14ma.

At that rate, I'd need to fill the windscreen with solar panels to have any hope of putting a bit of charge into the battery during a short winter day.

There really isn't much to get wrong - the most complicated bits of it is the distribution flaps, which all need to be fitted in the right way or they'd cause the thing to jam up.

The only thing I'm not 100% on is the blend flaps themselves. They're slightly V shaped, and I suppose it is possible I might have swapped left and right while putting it together, and thus the V may be upside down, perhaps upsetting the mixture of air. I'll have to take the old heater box apart and see if that's possible.

What I've just done for now is partially block up the front footwell vents, from the inside, to not look too bodged. What I hadn't realised about these is there is actually three holes that air comes out of - the main one you can see, and two smaller apertures underneath. One of these shoots air sort of INTO the centre console when the side panel is in place, which explains why the sides of the console get hot or cold... I've blocked up the main hole, and this side panel shooter, leaving just the other hidden hole that points forwards into the footwell. This has the added benefit that the near underseat vents (not the centre console rear vents) now actually do something with the increased pressure! With the airflow set to footwells and screen, the airflow is far more distributed between the footwells (front and rear) and screen. So I'm pleased with that.

Still hot on the floor, hopefully it will reduce the cooking of my feet. Might take it to work again tomorrow and see how it goes.

Or, I say fuck it, leave it on hi/hi and just turn the blower down to bugger all myself once its warm, accepting it as another piece of quality LR design.

I cannot see how I've gotten the heater box put together in some wrong way... it just doesn't seem possible. The air goes where its supposed to on demand, and I can have it hot or cold. Apparently, extending into both hot and cold simultaneously at its own discretion.

I LOVE my E39's climate control. I can have air wherever I want it front, back, top or bottom, or I can truly leave it to fend for itself. I can even have different temperature air from the centre console vents if I so wish. It'll roast you evenly from head to toe, or freeze your bollocks off in the height of summer, whatever you fancy! Not surprising LR built the L322 from the E39 5 series and E53 X5...

I think if I do that, I won't get much heat in the car at all. If I set the air to come out of the screen/face vents once its warmed up, I then continue to just get cool air from them and not much in the way of heat, despite the blend motors staying at 80%.

Other option I suppose is close all the face vents and see if lowering the temperature convinces it to stop roasting my feet. Then hope that the cool air keeps the screen clear. Just slightly annoying having freed up the heater box, swapped the heater core, put new blend motors in the thing, its still being a pain in the arse.

Right it isn't heat coming off the back of the heater core - drilled a small hole at the top of the rear panel just before the air starts passing over the heater core, stuck a thermocouple in, and its hot up there as soon as the air starts coming over.

What the hell have I done... to confuse things further, the passenger side dash vents are also colder than the drivers side. But both footwells seem to be the same.

What I have found is that with the blend motors on anything less than 100% (ie, hi/hi), the dash vents are cold once the interior has warmed up. As in, they are at least 10 degrees cooler than the footwells. That's shit. Looks like the dash is coming back out again. I'm getting mighty fed up.

This is actually driving me mad now. The top vents (either face or screen) are going properly cold (not full on air conditioned cold, but cold enough it feels like ambient outside cold) compared to the feet and I actually feel like I'm in different climate zones unless.

The air goes where its supposed to... I just get wildly different temperatures.

Had the nanocom plugged in just now and the only thing of note is the aspirator temp seems pretty optimistic, but regardless of whether it was actually 24c inside the car or not, I'd expect (and want) the air to be the same top and bottom, not roasting my feet while delivering a cool breeze up top...

I think I've only tried mine on cold days - it is comparatively tropical here at the moment. Maybe I'll take it to work tomorrow and see how it behaves being almost in double-digits outside. Maybe it will cool off a bit.

Ah if you're doing the gaskets too, just do it all at once - it'll be a LOT easier with that lot out of the way. You do

I did mine and one of them is leaking again -_- Didn't need RTV when I did them on my GEMS, so I figured I wouldn't need to on this either... when I come to fix it (again), I'll be sealing them up!

Have to say - since finding my blocked up thermostat heater return, my heater is ferocious at idle, and we left it in parallel when we replaced the entire sodding set of hoses. My vapourisor looked far too restrictive to put in series - and having cracked an Audi core open and seen the magic inside, I'm happier with it paralleled.

The studs aren't original, should be long bolts.

Getting at the coil packs is easy - you just need to find someone else to do it. If you're feeling sympathetic towards them, you'll pick someone with tiny hands. Otherwise, sitting on top of the engine and proceeding to swear all day long is my preferred method.

Coil pack insulation can breakdown, so it ends up arcing through to ground. Leads more likely though.

A 10w panel appeared today. I've just tried it in the shed (given its dark, naturally) and under an LED floodlight above my desk, its managing a short circuit current of a whopping 3ma. I hope it manages a bit more outside in daylight... will take it to work with a meter and find out tomorrow.

Hahaha

Why do we own these things?

I've had a thought how I might go about 'solving' this... I might just partially block up the front footwell vents. Firstly reduces the roasting of my feet, and also forces more air back to the rear underseat vents.

When I first got my Thor, it had a mismatch set of leads on it, and it soon started missing badly.

I put a set of those Intermotor ones on as well as change both coil packs for new Br*tpart ones... to be fair to them, they've done 12k miles on LPG so far and are just fine. One of the original Bosch packs had a chunk of a terminal broken off.

-_- cheek!

My ducts are all nicely sealed up - I took advantage of having the dash out and arrived at Marty's with draft excluder and duct tape!

I have no idea how I've managed it if this isn't normal. Even if I'd not lined up the distribution flaps properly, that would just mean I'd have air coming out of places on the wrong settings... but they all behave as they should. The only thing I can think is that where the footwell air passes back over the rear of the matrix section, when air is passing through said section, its heating up the rear plastic, and then the footwell air is being heated by that. But it seems very hot for that amount of heat exchange to be going on...

This is the bit I mean, with the front panel that keeps the air going down to the vents in place.