How The Air Cooled Beetle Used Exhaust Gas To Heat Its Cabin

We will avoid the low-hanging fruit here and just say up front that no, old Beetles didn’t pipe hot exhaust gas straight into their cabins. They relied on exhaust gases to heat up (relatively) fresh air, which was then routed into the cabin to warm people up, a way even utilized in a slew of Beetles that got lost within the Antarctic.

Air is pulled into the engine compartment by a fan, which then lets the air flow over the recent engine components to chill them down. In Beetles built before 1963, the air that had been warmed by the motor was then routed into the cabin to warm the passengers. After 1963, VW added heat exchangers to get the air even hotter. The warmth exchanger is sort of a pipe inside a pipe;  air used to chill the engine flows through the inner pipe, while hot exhaust gas flows through the outer pipe. The exhaust heat is then transferred to the inner pipe through cast-metal fins on the latter. Finally, the heated air is channeled to the automotive’s interior to assist keep folks cozy.

Now, there was still a probability for exhaust fumes and other nasty stuff to get through to the automotive’s interior, but that is since the so-called fresh air first omitted the engine itself to assist keep it cool. If there have been any oil or exhaust leaking from the engine, it could possibly be picked up by the air that eventually got heated by the exhaust gas for the cabin. 

One in every of the principal issues related to an air-cooled Bug is that, even when brand-new, the heating system simply didn’t provide enough hot air for U.S. drivers. Nevertheless, that will be easily solved, as the issue is frequently positioned in the driving force’s seat, not within the Beetle’s HVAC system. In keeping with some advice buried deep throughout the Volkswagen owner’s manuals, “The automotive will warm up quicker when you open a vent window in order that the blower can force the nice and cozy air more easily into the otherwise well-sealed interior.” In other words, unless you cracked open a window, it was physically difficult to force more hot air into the cabin because there was nowhere for the cold air that was already there to go. Readers of a certain age may recall the ocean-going VW Beetle that would float because its cabin was so tight.

The warmth exchanger will be one other source of difficulties for today’s drivers. The unique OEM inner pipe had quite a few metal fins on it to assist get more heat from the exhaust gas into the cabin air. Newer aftermarket replacements, nonetheless, often lower your expenses by having fewer fins, which permit less heat to be exchanged. It might probably even be easy for the system’s various clips, hoses, and ducts to be damaged after a long time of use. The identical holds true for the control cables that allow the recent air into (or keep it out of) the cabin.

The entire 21.5 million classic Volkswagen Beetles, which were on sale until 2003 (in Mexico), relied on air-cooling. One weird but expected Beetle prototype was developed with a water-cooled engine in 1984 for the Mexican market, nevertheless it never entered production. 

However, the Recent Beetle (1998-2010) and its successor, the Beetle A5 (2012-2019), featured modern water-cooled engines that utilize heater cores as a substitute of warmth exchangers to warm the cabin. Here, a coolant liquid is piped through the engine to soak up heat. The liquid then flows into and warms the heater core, and fresh air blows through the core, heating up because it enters the automotive’s interior.

Now front-engined, the 1998 Recent Beetle premiered with a alternative of two water-cooled engines: a 2.0-liter, four-cylinder gas engine with 115 horsepower and 122 pound-feet of torque, and a 1.9-liter four-cylinder turbodiesel producing 90 horsepower/149 pound-feet of torque. A turbocharged four-cylinder gas unit debuted in 1999 with 150 horsepower, which was later boosted to 180 horsepower for 2002. For 2006, a 2.5-liter five-cylinder mill arrived, setting the precedent for the return of five-cylinder fun for the VW Golf R’s twenty fifth anniversary. 

It also carried over to the ultimate generation of the Beetle –– not less than for now. The Beetle family’s power finally peaked when the limited-edition 2014 GSR launched with 210 horsepower from a 2.0-liter turbo 4.