Interior Air Vents

[maginter]

Hey All -

As I am crawling around under the dash of my MK1 I was wondering if anyone has done an interior air vent to let fresh air into the driving compartment. I have not spent a lot of time driving my car, but I was thinking that on hot and humid days, it would be nice to have some internal air flow....Or an I really overthinking this???

Thoughts?

Thanks!

Mark

[MARIAH]

I contemplated Cobra Earl's type vents but 100,000 miles and 20 years later, I never went beyond thinking.
I did recently double checked all the foam pushed in up next to the doors. All passed the "light" test.
But I did go ahead last month, against the recommendations of others and added reflective panels on the engine side of the foot boxes.
No real road trips yet to judge the value. I already have the bubble insulation under the carpet on the inside.
My focus now is in venting out the rear of the hardtop to get some flow through air........

[PaulProe]

Take a look here - all kinds of vents, original and add-on
https://prdcrrct.com/product-category/air-vents/?v=0b3b97fa6688

[CraigS]

I had the Cobra Earls vents in my MkII. I wouldn't be w/o them. I wished I had gone w/ the fans also but never did. When I sat stopped at a long traffic light I wished I had fans though. As I said in another thread I had an APE hardtop on the car all the time but took the windows out when it was warm. Having air coming into the footwell and out through the window openings was very nice.

[egchewy79]

It has been done but may require you to remove the body from the car to do it right. Making sure that the gap between the body and the footbox is properly sealed will help a lot with any ambient heat coming from the engine bay.

[cob427sc]

I installed my own on 2 builds running 3" hose from the brake vents, shut of valves (boat supply) made of pvc and electric bilge fans (also boat supply). Dumped the air into the footwells. Although not A/C, on a hot day in traffic it was well appreciated. If I remember correctly all the pieces from Amazon were less than $100.

[gbranham]

Mariah's testimony is all you need. He's in South Carolina (meaning it gets hot and humid), and he has 100,000 miles (!!!) on his car over 20 years, and hasn't added vents. I didn't have them on my first build, and based on that experience, I didn't put them on my 2nd build, either.

Greg

[AC Bill]

Back when I built my car I had read so many builders complaining about uncomfortable footbox heat, I decided to find a solution to avoid that. I started out looking seriously at the bilge blower style, but I was disappointed in how little air actually passed through the duct tube. As well, I was thinking I'd need one for each footbox. As sometimes happen with builders of these cars, I brainstormed a bit, and came up with my own solution.
I used a squirrel cage fan system that a friend volunteered from a car he was dismantling. I used it's original housing, and ran an insulated hose from where I mounted it in the upper trunk, to a T fitting, where I than ran hoses from it to vents installed in both footboxes. I liked that it had a 3-speed fan, so I could choose what level of air flow I wanted. I rigged a cable controlled blast gate to the fan housing intake, to prevent ambient air feeding through the system if the weather was cold, or perhaps when driving at night.. Fresh air intake was via a small scoop mounted between the roll bars. (A scoop from a Daytona Coupe)
It works very well, but is rarely used, as my other efforts of interior insulating the footboxes. That, and a reflective heat panel mounted slightly spaced off the front of the footbox, reduced the header heat significantly. It's sure nice when you need it though, like on an extremely hot summer day.

[Andrew Davis]

Considered vents, fans and ducting etc. As mentioned by other folks, the majn culprit was heat from the higher pressured bay coming around the foot boxes. My solution was to hand form heavy duty aluminum foil plugs to fit into openings. i know, low-tech and not "show quality", but they help and are easily removable if body needs to come off.