Necessity is the mother of invention

[JohnT]

This is really, uh... Cool.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292809,00.html

[Trinitee]

Seen a picture, floating around the net, of another guy's bright idea. He had a A/C unit rigged coming in from the passenger with gas powered generator bolted to his trunk lid.

[Steelsun]

As a PI, I used to have to do long surveillances in the Texas summer sun. You can't run your car/truck all day for AC when you do this (it gives you away - puddle, running car, etc).

You learn other ways to cope. One of the best is you customize a cooler: cut out circles in either end and have a fan on one of them blowing out - it draws air over ice and helps cool you down - it can be run on a marine battery for a long time (I used a simple dc fan and a small marine battery that lasted about 2 weeks of daily use before I needed to recharge it). A block of ice would last 4-6 hours depending on conditions.
Some people have come up with more complex variations involving multiple fans, cooling coils, etc.
One cravaet: Don't use "Dry ice" - the CO and CO2 emitted will kill you dead.

[Steelsun]

Here's a real expensive and fancy version of what I mentioned above:
http://www.joenterprises.com/jocool.htm
(this company also makes photo gadgets for investigators and others)

[Trinitee]

When I used to restore old Aircooled VW's there was an accessory swamp cooler that would mount to the passenger window and would hold about a gallon of water. Simple concept.. car moves, air forced in the cooler, cooled by the water and into the car. It sucked if you were still. They have made a repro of it out of fiberglass but they added a 12v fan that could be plugged into a cigarette lighter.

Heres a picture of what it looks like:

[Trinitee]

Germans were so creative with the old aircooled Volkswagens. The same concept of the above mentioned cooler applied for the heater, air from engine fan blowed into heater boxes. This was fine for normal weather, but for those in extreeme cold they had what they called 'Eberspacher'. It was a flame burning heater that worked off the gasoline from the fuel tank. In the Beetles it was mounted in the trunk (front) right next to the gas tank (yikes) and there was a "chimney" duct that came under the fender well. The buses had them in the rear.

Those babies would keep the car VERY toasty.

This is a picture of one mounted in a Beetle


This link gives a closer look to what it looks like (the ones shown is for a bus or a Type --3)
http://www.type2.com/library/heating/b2pics.htm

Just yapping away.....

[studiocygnet]

Originally Posted by Steelsun

Here's a real expensive and fancy version of what I mentioned above:
http://www.joenterprises.com/jocool.htm
(this company also makes photo gadgets for investigators and others)

Wow, what makes that $995.00. Here is another link to a version a whole lot cheaper.
http://www.kooleraire.com/