I just got my ac system back up and running yesterday, and I had an interesting idea. When the ac wasn't working, the worst part of the car was the seatback. I always had a big wet sweat ring on my back from long drives. On my camry there's a vent on both the driver and passenger side floor under the front seats to blow on the feet of rear passengers. I'm toying with the idea of piping up from this into the crevice between the seat back and bottom of the driver's seat, or somehow piping it into the seatback itself. Some cars have air-cooled seats, though I can't think of any off the top of my head. Has anybody tried something like this? I'm looking for some different ideas/opinions
I'm not certain, but I think those ducts only have air going to them when the selector is in the floor position. I believe for Maximum A/C the selector is in the face position. Give it quick try before buying the parts.
I have a setting for the face and floor setting, and it blows but just not very strong. I was looking online and found that saab has air going into the seats and has a fan in each seat to blow the air stronger. I might get a seat from the junkyard to experiment on so I don't hack mine all up.
This is the first day it hasn't rained since friday, so the next chunk of free time I get I'll mess around with this. I found this generic picture of a seatback online, but see how the hole is cut in the cushioning on this seat? I'm thinking If I cut out some small squares of the cushion in the lower back of the seat and run flex piping into the seatback, it should be strong enough to blow through just the fabric of the seat. Or I could install fans...we'll see
I'm finally getting time to go up to the junkyard this sunday. I'm going to look for fans to install in the seat and blow the air through. I know that there's a few saab's that have these fans. Someone mentioned the sequoia. Does anybody know of some other cars I can try to scavenge some fans off of?
Another option not a dry as a air blowing would be water circulating. You'd need to insert tubes and circulate cold water. Perhaps use an air to water heat exchanger from the A/C unit and circulate that through the seat.
but I think I'd just buy a new car first. . . .
Just think when Winter comes you could switch it over to engine coolant and run 180f water through your spine! :lol: :lol:
hha water cooling is a bit too adventurous of a project for me, I probably would just buy another car. But the ac seat should be relatively easy. The back of the seat pops off, so I'm just going to get some flex hose and run it from the vent under the seat up the back and cut out a square of foam from the lower back area, maybe slots for more support, and install a small fan to help the cool air through. I'll just wire the fan to a switch somewhere so I can turn it on and off. I'm going to find a fan meant for this purpose at the junkyard sunday, and I'll check ace hardware for the piping. If I have time to do the install sunday too I'll take notes and pictures.
So the saab 9-5 has fans and this link is the seat bottom from a 2008 bmw. I don't think my setup will be quite like that but this is the general idea of what I'm going for, only in the seat back