Why is my '69 T heater blowing cold air?

[zmayne]

I seem to be having a problem with the heater on my '69 T. I have all new heater hoses that were installed when I put in a 2.4 a few weeks ago. I checked the flapper boxes and they're opening and closing fine.
Here's the problem. When the heater is on, hot air comes out of the driver's side defrost vent, but its cool on the passenger side. When I crank up the heater blower, it blows cool air through both sides. I checked the tubes in the front compartment and everything looks hooked up.
Is there a fresh air vent somewhere that I'm missing?
Thanks,
Zach

[304065]

Zach,

You have a cable off somewhere.

Check out this thread and the diagram.

Use the search. Heating

[zmayne]

Thanks John, I'll start tracking down the cables. Guess I could have used that handy search feature.

[jittsl]

You may already know this but I am left wondering by something you said about "cranking up the heat".

In the early models there are three controls on the dash board. The top control opens the fresh air and controls a fan that only pushes cold air. The second control from the top directs the fresh cold air up or down. The bottom control directs hot air up or down and is unrelated to the top 2.

To get heat to work you use the control beside the handbrake to get hot air flowing and then simply direct it up or down with the bottom dash control.

For maximum heat do not open the top control - doing so will add external fresh cool air into the mix. Also note that because hot air is driven by the engine's cooling fan the amount of hot air flowing will be entirely dependent on engine speed

[zmayne]

Actually, I'll admit my ignorance. I thought the fan WOULD blow hot air into the cockpit once the floor lever was opened. So, no fan, just pull the lever and direct the air up or down. Not great for slow moving traffic! This is the first winter that I'll actually be using my car regularly, thus the lack of knowledge of the heater controls. Also, all the labels are missing from the controls, so deciphering them is a bit difficult.
Thanks!

[jittsl]

I had the same ignorance until I pulled it all apart last week to figure out how to make it work. One other suggestion (and this is particularily true if you really only have heat coming out of one side) is to remove the flapper boxes from one end and the air distribution box from the other and put a vacumn cleaner to work as deep into the heater tubes as you can. I discovered that something had nested in my driver side and completely blocked the air flow -- the vacumn did the trick.

PS it is unlikely that a cable being disconnected will cause heat on one side only. Because of the way it works, if the flapper boxes work then hot air will flow equally up both sides. The only thing that may not work past that is that the air not be able to be directed up or down it will just go in whatever direction it was last directed before the cable disconnected. It is however possible that you could get hot air going up or down on one side and the opposite on the other.