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Heater Channel Replacement Article
by dragenwagen
copyright 2002
Page 2
*Disclaimer* This really isn't a how to. This is merely a collection of my thoughts and pictures. If you decide to undertake replacing the heater channels in your Beetle, then it is up to you to decide if you are capable of this task. You accept all risks involved in this endeavor. I am in no way responsible for your actions or your results. I am not responsible if you get killed, hurt, injured, squashed, burned, maimed, disfigured, burn your house down, accidental amputation of body parts, snoring, bed wetting, nightmares, drunk and disorderly conduct, profuse swearing or any other unforeseen natural or unnatural act for which I have no control over. Basically you take what I say or any of my pictures as merely reference material or entertainment material. Please do not use my pictures or my articles as I have written this and I am the owner of this article and all that which is contained in it. All pictures are mine. If you would like to link to them or use them in any way please email me and ask first.
Moving on
to heater channels -
Now I will cover how to remove the heater channels and some concerns you will need to be aware of. You will need
to know how your car was put together in in the first place to understand how to fix it. The heater channel is
a major structural point in your car. It ties the A and B pillar together and it serves as the door sill as well
as the passage that the heat from the heat exchanger that the hot air will travel to the front of your car. When
you take out the heater channel there is nothing there to keep the door opening from spreading apart and that's
why you do one side at a time. I had night mare visions of the roof buckling and the car turning into a twisted
mess. Therefore the door opening should be braced with some thing like a piece of angle iron welded across the
opening, or simply close the door and never open it while the heater channel is out. The HVW Magazine article showed
a jig you could buy for around $78 a side. Nice to have but no thanks. But you will need to check to make sure
the door is going to close right before final welding. I will cover how I did it later. I did however find out
that my lower hinge pin is very worn and it is going to need to be replaced. My door has always needed a little
"lift" right before it latched closed, and its not the latch plate because the body lines don't match
up until the door is latched. I thought it was the lower A pillar area where the heater channel was rusted out,
but upon real close inspection it is the lower hinge pin that is causing my drivers door to sag.
One really good thing to do is make a bunch of measurements to how the original heater channel is in place. I measured about 12 different measurements at different points. A couple of them were how wide the door opening was, mine was 36.5" from the A Pillar back to the B Pillar. I also measured how far from the tunnel the A Pillar was and how far from the tunnel to the B Pillar was. I also checked to see if the passenger side was the same measurements and they were. Now that the measurements are out of the way you can get on to the removal.
What to do
first -
| Look at what you have first. Tools, parts, safety gear and a nice place to work safely. You have the car up on jackstands with fenders and running boards off, Take a wire wheel and remove the paint, undercoating, and crud off the lower front wheel well. Now you should be able to see the spot welds there is something like 50 of them. These are going to need to be drilled out , but not right now. I had to do some A pillar repair on mine and I thought it would be best if I made the repair before I started to hack out the heater channels. I cut out some rusted metal in the lower fenderwell. This also included the lowest nut plate for the front fender. You can see what I have done here. I used an old original fender that was banged up pretty bad, the headlight bucket was pushed in and I didn't feel like salvaging it, so I used it for donor metal for any patches I might have to make. Less chance of rejection by the VW body....lol |
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| Speaking of metal patches, you can get rust repair panels from different sources or from donor cars from a junkyard. I think now as an after thought that I should have gotten the lower A pillar repair piece. But who knows maybe I will do that one later after the heater channels are done. | |
| Next you need to remove all the seam sealer, paint and crud off of the lower quarter panel with a wire wheel to see the spot welds. They will need to be drilled out, but not right now.... You are still getting to know how the heater channel is a part of your car |
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| On the inside of the car you will need to remove all the seam sealer, paint and crud where the fender well meets the heater channel and where the front bulkhead and the heater channel attach. You will be cutting the heater channel up at the front bulkhead later so its best to clean all this area up. |
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| This is where the heater channel ties into the A pillar on the inside of your car. This will be cut but go ahead and clean all the junk off of it with the wire wheel. Mine had a badly installed patch that was temporarily installed for support. Yes, I did that a few years back in hope that that would be sufficient. I knew it wouldn't be good enough for a permanent fix and I have removed it as I am in the process of reconstructing the A pillar. As I said earlier I might get the replacement panel and redo the whole thing. |
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| Moving to the back of the car I will show you some more areas where the heater channel is tied into the rest of the body. | |
| This is where the B Pillar ties into the heater channel and this area will need to be cleaned up and all the rust removed. This need to be a strong area as this is also where the seatbelt bolts to the body. If this area is all rusted out you will need to do some reconstructive work or replace the pieces with that of a donor car. |
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| This is where the duct enters the heater channel. I have cleaned off the paint and surface rust and started to drill the spot welds out. There is another piece of the duct that I have already removed. On earlier models this area differs. On pre-68 models this is a metal duct all the way back to where it enters the body and it will have to be cut out with a cutoff wheel. For models with a generator and the voltage regulator under the back seat, it will have to be taken out as its going to get in your way. |
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| The other piece of duct can be removed easily that you have the body off the pan. There are 2 10mm bolts that hold a piece of the duct into place. With the body on the rear torsion bar is in the way and I think that it is impossible to get to both bolts and remove this piece. I have tried to remove that piece under the seat unsuccessfully in the past and just tore it all up. These parts are old and they will break and good luck on finding this in a junkyard |
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| Here the heater channel is spot welded to the lower package shelf. There are spot welds that along this arch and believe it or not there is a couple spot welds that are in between the inner and outer skin of the rear quarter panel. This proved to be a royal pain in the ass, and I think I created a few new words and I think only one tool went flying across the garage! I will cover how I dealt with my anger and solved this problem. This is one of the reasons I say that the inner skins were put on first then the outer skins of the car were put on, well it makes sense. |
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Now that you understand how the heater channel ties in with the rest of the body you will be able to determine what your car needs or what does and doesn't need to be replaced. Now is it necessary to replace the heater channels on both sides? Well would you replace one brake pad? Or replace just one piston ring? I would go ahead and replace both sides, that way you know that the job was done right and they should last a long time. Besides I don't want to have to tear into this car like this again!
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3 - Cutting out heater Channels
