56 panel resto. Heater pipe?????

[freebasedeathmonkey]

Am restoring my 56 double door panel from the ground up and have come across some strange "upgrades" during the strip down. Does anyone have a pic of the centre heating pipe on a 56 that runs the length of the bus? Mine appears to have been codged and bodged to fit so think its the wrong pipe.

[mintonman]

Klassic fab has the heater tube listed on their site, but no pictures. It says it's 1 piece if that helps any. You may want to contact them for some info since they reproduce everything.
_________________
Hoockd on fonicks werkt for mee?
under the influance "DUH"

[thom]

Here's my '57 with the KF tube

_________________
-Thom
1956 Single Cab
1957 Porsche 356A Sunroof
1957 23-Window Deluxe
1957 Mercedes Westfalia single cab
1963 Unimog 404
1965 E-Type

[npbusguy]

I think both heater boxes hook up to the "Y" pipe in the back on a panel.

[freebasedeathmonkey]

Thanx everyone. Does anybody know what the differences are on these pipes from front to back over the years of production? Are there any or is it a case of them being all the same from start of production to end? Excluding barndoor era of course.

[freebasedeathmonkey]

Particularly the jointed parts between the area where the belly pans finish and it goes through another cross plate and up into the cab?

[sandowner]

Do you know anyone who supplies the original lagging (insulation) for the heater pipe?

Any advice much appreciated

[Major Woody]

I have never seen the insulation offered for sale. But you can have it sewn up at a local upholstery shop. For the early years it's just canvas with a few layers of fiberglass matting sewn inside and secured with twist clamps which you can buy from a forum user for cheap. You can get the fiberglass from any place that sells fiberglass supplies as it is the same stuff used for molding objects using resin etc. It has a very coarse weave.

For later buses it is gray vinyl from your local upholstery house, with the same fiberglass matting sewn inside. But the originals had a molded gray plastic snap channel (think zip-loc) that forms a seam on the bottom. I don't think that is available, so you would have to either do without, or very carefully remove it from an original set and sew it onto your new one (good luck with that as it gets VERY brittle with age).

[sandowner]

Thanks for the advice. I have the original 'later' grey vinyl zip-loc insulation on the bus (63) but really need to take it off as part of a restoration. Just really worried that it will fall to pieces and I won't be able to replace it.

I will perhaps start with the short length under the cab floor and see what happens (and let you know!)

[Major Woody]

Mine (plastic) did not do so well during disassembly. I left the long piece in place because I was able to. Smaller pieces I ruined one, one was already MIA, and one was sent to me used by a kind forum member.

Piece of advice--heat up the plastic with a heat gun during the removal/"unzipping" process. It will make the plastic much more pliable.

[sandowner]

Managed to get all three pieces off with limited sucess. Most of it 'unzipped' but there was some splitting. Heatgun helped quite a bit so thanks for the tip!

Biggest problem was that the insulation was the only thing holding the heater pipe in place! It had rusted completely through between the main frames and just dropped out. New heater pipe on order....

[crukab]