One of the coolest original accessories you can add to your 3A is the
Harrison heater. They can usually be found on Ebay for between $50 and
$100, however, being 50 years old, they are generally pretty rusty. I
found my heater on Ebay for $101, which I later realized I way overpaid! I
will not go in to too much detail here once again because two very valuable
websites exist that go into great detail on restoring the heater:
CJ-3B Page.
Here's my
$100 pile of rust. |
To the naked
eye it looks pretty bad, but it was worse! |
What's left
of the Willys decal |
I finally got
the back off. Someone welded a steel patch over the mounting stud on
the right. |
This is where
all the Harrison heaters break. It's very thin sheetmetal and a small
reinforcement in the rear of the mounting stud. |
After
removing the plate that was welded on, I marked the area I wanted to cut
out. |
Here I made a
template of the hole so I could transfer them once the new piece was welded
in. |
Here the new
piece is clamped in place... |
And here is
the back with the sheetmetal replaced and a new stud installed. |
Stripped and
ready for paint! |
The fan was
taken apart and cleaned and painted. |
I don't think
these knock-outs were on the 2A's (anyone know?), but they are for the
Harrison heater. You won't find these on repro bodies! |
The heater
core is leak tested underwater with about 20psi of air. |
Any small
leaks were repaired with some epoxy. |
The core and
the fan are installed. |
A brand new
heater is ready to install! |
The unit is
pretty difficult to squeeze under the dash. I ended up cutting about
1/2" off the heater core tubes to get it in. |
The heater
fits great in the holes already provided from the factory. I used a
nice retro rotary switch I found on Ebay to power the unit. |
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