Avanti- unbearable Interior Heat/lack of ventilation

[jd-stude]

My Avanti became tolerably hot afer I installed insulating mat mentioned. I also put the mat on top of the transmission housing under the control cables and sealed any air leaks from the engine compartment. I was driving it without carpet and padding at first so maybe thats why I consider it tolerable now. Ken

[PackardV8]

The only way to make an Avanti tolerable in hot weather and reduce engine and road noise, is to rebuild the car. The factory engineers have admitted in interviews they ran out of time and money to fix the very obvious problems.
1. Remove the engine. Install a hot rod cable throttle and seal the stock throttle hole. Seal all other holes as per above. Install the foil-faced Dynamat inside the engine compartment and transmission tunnel to reflect heat away before it gets to the fibreglas.
2. Paint the entire interior of the car, from the firewall to the rear of the trunk, including the inside of the roof, with Lizard Skin. It insulates and dampens road noise.
3. Install heat shields above the exhaust pipes and mufflers. Many foreign cars use them. I got mine off Saabs and Volvos at a PicknPull.
4. Install a good aftermarket AC unit, such as Southern Air or Vintage Air.
5. Install an overdrive 5-speed or 4-speed automatic.
It will be a huge investment of time and money, but it makes it a usable car instead of a beautiful sculpture.

thnx, jack vines

[wfhenderson]

WOW-- HOT hot hot!

This message is from the original poster of the question:

Thank you all for weighing in. All suggestions are appreciated! It sounds like I have touched a nerve that is already raw for many of us. I love the suggestion to drive an Avanti only when it is between 58 and 78 degrees and not raining. I am surprised I haven't found other threads on the board discussing this topic. You must all be a hearty bunch from the Amazon... or you all live in mostly very cold places where the constant heat is welcome.

As the owner of a 1957 Thunderbird (also), I am quite familiar with cockpit heat and discussions of solutions like dynamat, muffler heat shields, etc. But let me tell you, the Thunderbird crew has NEVER felt what it is like to drive an Avanti in the summer, and I am coming to the conclusion that they are all babies for complaining about THAT car. Hell, at least in my T-Bird I can take off the roof.

Must incredible to me is the fact that the interior vents blow such hot air. Either the seal is leaking hot air at the base of my windshield (not likely), or the inside of the cowl is so hot that it superheats the air in its short journey from cowl vents to footwell, almost like a very effective air-to-air heat exchanger (very likely)

Which leads me to muse how efficient the supercharger is, under the hood, where it operates in probably 180 degree ambient air.

Has anyone else had the experience of the heater control valve from SI that seems to operate backwards from the original?

Does anyone have an article or a link that tells about the transmission tunnel ducting? Has the topic of the interior sauna been covered in detail in any club (or other) publication?

All comments appreciated.... even funny but unhelpful ones! You are a great group and I am proud to be a member.

Bill Henderson

[WCP]

That heat control unit is not right! You should not get heated air from the vents when the outside levers are in the forward position. Did SI substitute the part? My R2 Avanti does get a bit warm in 95F+ ambient temps. but it is air tight, water tight and gives fresh outside air when the vents are open. A lot of this is simply attention to detail in adjusting windows, weatherseals, and firewall openings. I did close in the underseat tunnels that branch from the main drivetrain tunnel and maybe that has contributed some the the reduction of tunnel heat and noise. I did convert mine to a T5 manual that is quite a bit slimmer than the automatic and probably accounts for the greatest drop in tunnel temp. My 1st Avanti was an R1 with air, and was driven to Estes Park, Colorado and Indianapolis for the National meets in very hot weather with a family aboard quite comfortably cooled - so don't be put off by all the negative comments. Adding air to an R2 as Peter Sant has, is the way to go but at my age (mid 70's) I decided to leave the R2 as is for now. Nevertheless, my wife and I have put 13000 km on the car over the past 3 summers, and my wife does not like to be uncomfortable.

[ddub]

I bought a replacement heater control valve from SI for my Champ truck and it operates opposite to the original. I assume they cannot source a valve that operates in the original direction.

[studegary]

I have installed the transmission tunnel cooling kit in a 1963 Avanti and it did make a big improvement, but it was still a hot fiberglass car. You used to be able to buy the whole kit for this installation. Try SI, Dave T. and other vendors for the kit.

[WCP]

If the control valves operate in reverse then I'm sure SI would indicate so. Remove the control knobs and console cover plates and verify that the control wires are correctly attached to their respective controls. Also make sure that the control wire to the back of the heater box is attached and not binding and that the door into the box is closing properly. With that closed, there should be little air passing thru the heater box. Opening the door to the kickcowl vent should introduce fresh cool outside air. Confirm that that door is opening and closing properly. There can be a lot of lost motion in that control movement due to the wire jacket moving. I've added extra clamps on the cable jacket at the firewall corners to minimize that lost motion. There is definitely something wrong with your Avanti setup. Keep at it and you will sort it out.

[wfhenderson]

Hot air through the floor (cowl) vents??

Thank you WCP, Studegary, packardv8 and all others.

Avanti owners-- just checking my sanity-- verify for me: the outside air that comes out the kick panel vents ducts DIRECTLY from the cowl vent opening... it does NOT pass through the heater plenum, right? IE- if the entire heater box was removed, the cowl vents would still work, right?

Well, the air coming out of my kick panel vents when the car is hot is also very HOT.

I read somewhere on one of these forums that a poor seal at the base of the windshield/back of the hood would allow super hot air to be sucked into the cowl vents from the engine compartment. If my cowl air is hot, I am trying to determine if this could be a cause, even though my hood seal gasket looks OK.

I have read all of the responses posted here, and I have to believe that I have a problem that is in excess of normal. My car is HOT-HOT, like the heater is on. I am trying to go through troubleshooting and see if hot water may be circulating through my heater core even though I believe the heat valve is closed tightly.

[rockne10]

I'm not familiar with the heater hose routing on the Avanti but why not, for trouble-shooting purposes, route a jumper hose from the pump to the block, bypassing the heater core. If the heat persists, the valve and/or core are not the problem.

[JDP]

Thank you WCP, Studegary, packardv8 and all others.

Avanti owners-- just checking my sanity-- verify for me: the outside air that comes out the kick panel vents ducts DIRECTLY from the cowl vent opening... it does NOT pass through the heater plenum, right? IE- if the entire heater box was removed, the cowl vents would still work, right?

Well, the air coming out of my kick panel vents when the car is hot is also very HOT.

I read somewhere on one of these forums that a poor seal at the base of the windshield/back of the hood would allow super hot air to be sucked into the cowl vents from the engine compartment. If my cowl air is hot, I am trying to determine if this could be a cause, even though my hood seal gasket looks OK.

I have read all of the responses posted here, and I have to believe that I have a problem that is in excess of normal. My car is HOT-HOT, like the heater is on. I am trying to go through troubleshooting and see if hot water may be circulating through my heater core even though I believe the heat valve is closed tightly.

The cowl vents do dump into kick panels and drain into the hog troughs. My theory is the troughs can act like a heat sink, heater box because they are close to the exhaust. I've never felt much cool air coming from those. Studebaker managed to make the hog troughs both rust from the draining water, and heat the incoming air. The main problem is all that hot cast iron passing heat into the cabin, with just fiberglass to block it. The heat runs from the engine/transmission right down the console between the seats

[studebaker-R2-4-me]

If the control valves operate in reverse then I'm sure SI would indicate so. Remove the control knobs and console cover plates and verify that the control wires are correctly attached to their respective controls. Also make sure that the control wire to the back of the heater box is attached and not binding and that the door into the box is closing properly. With that closed, there should be little air passing thru the heater box. Opening the door to the kickcowl vent should introduce fresh cool outside air. Confirm that that door is opening and closing properly. There can be a lot of lost motion in that control movement due to the wire jacket moving. I've added extra clamps on the cable jacket at the firewall corners to minimize that lost motion. There is definitely something wrong with your Avanti setup. Keep at it and you will sort it out.

I bought a heater control valve from SI for my Hawk and they do work backwards. I took me awhile to figure out the problem when I was fiddling around with controls in the fall to get some heat. I just figured it did not work and used it as a connection point for the heater hoses after installing it. I finally found a decent re-buildable valve at a swap meet. I sent away for the rubber and piston rubber from a guy in California and rebuilt the one I found. I didn't like the fact that the SI replacement valve was operating backwards. They should mention that the valve works backward but they don't. I did complain about the same thing.

[Rerun]

I drove a '63 R-1 automatic (w/o A/C) for 29 years. I feel your pain. The discomfort level was a major factor in finally selling the car. We once got stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, on a 95 degree day when it began to storm. IIRC, I lost about 12 pounds in that sauna!

I finally found the solution, which is the '78 that I am driving now. It affords much more comfort. The vents work, and the A/C blasts cold on the hottest days. The car is much cooler and quieter. Maybe there's a great insulation value to the thick shag carpets that they used in that era.

[kmul221]

I drove my 55 Speedster from Hamilton to South Bend for a Int.meet,I smelt flesh burning ! It was my legs,I could have cooked dinner on the transmission hump,my Packard Hawk with the water cooled trans.had the same problem.I believe this problem to be common to all C-K's with automatic trans.The GT I now have still is hot but not as bad as the others mentioned.A 53 K I had with manual trans. was no where near as bad.
After that trip the wife no longer wishes to go on long trips in summer heat,she follows in her air conditioned ride.

[fstst56]

No problem in my '63 I now have...but my '72 was VERY hot !...I put shut-off valves in the heater hoses and thin cardboard behind the kick panel vents, turned on the A/C and was very comfortable after that.

[wfhenderson]

I believe the external heater hose shut off valve is a good idea for a start. It is easy to do, and having a tank of boiling hot water under the dash can't help my situation.... though by design, this should not be necessary. In fact that is, EXACTLY what the heater control valve under the dash is supposed to do, right?

I will start the process of elimination. I suppose fiberglass is not a very good heat insulator, and with the three-speed automatic transmission and 3.73 gears, I find I am running a rather alarming 3800 PM at 75 MPH.

I am amazed at the temperature under the hood when I open it up. I have owned many high performance cars, and this thing is like a furnace. The temperatire gauge reads just over 180 degrees and I have recored the radiator; so far no overheating. I seriously wanted to avoid adding Air Conditioning to a car that I will drive sparingly. But the current situation is rather unbearable.