Daily Archive

Well, as anyone who owns an old beetle probably knows. The heating and defrost in a bug isn’t the best design ever made. With Wally I can cook my feet, but have almost no defrost and the heat on the passenger side is less than optimal. So, I decided to do some work on the bug today.

First thing I did was adjust all of the cable conrols to the heat flappers. Both front foot controls and the rear under the seat Y pipes. Turns out the Y pipe under the rear seat passenger side wasn’t even connected. The flapper was stuck in floor mode.

Also, for some reason which I cannot fathom the rear Y pipes are vented. Which means, no matter what, the rear seat gets 90% of the air, hot or cold. Here’s what they look like.

From Wally the Superbeetle

The pipe to the top goes to the front heater channel and the defrost system, the pipe towards the bottom of the pic is for the rear floor heat. So I did a quick duct tape modification to see how it would effect my front defrost. Here is what it looks like after my changes.

From Wally the Superbeetle

I’m hoping this will give me some forced air to the front. Maybe if this works I can get rid of the paper towel I currently use as a defroster. Fingers crossed and we’ll see how well it works.