Manual to digital heater controls

[neilsayers]

Hello,

Does anyone have any experience with replacing the manual heater controls with digital heater controls?

I have bought a digital control panel for the front without doing any research, and now I fear I may have wasted my money and bitten off more than I can chew!

The main issue seems to be that manual-control vans have flaps mechanically controlled by the sliders, whereas the digital one has servos. So I am guessing I need to buy more bits to make it work (not just the 'head unit'). Ah well - a nice project for the winter perhaps?

Any thoughts or advice? Thanks!

[Simon Jones]

You're going to need all the heater parts from a donor vehicle including the wiring and probably / possibly the sunlight sensor on the dashboard and the external temp sensor by the radiator. I've never heard of anyone successfully doing this conversion, but anything is possible given sufficient time, energy & money .

[mikeonb4c]

And is there really any advantage. With just the slightest bit of lateral thinking, the person in the car can be seen as as the digital controller. And with the manual system there's so much less (ageing) technology to go wrong. I'm very happy to have the old manual aircon controls in mine - simple as pressing a button on and off and adjusting a heat slider maybe, and I think I'll do a better job than a couple of clogged sensors in assessing when the climate in the car is right

[neilsayers]

Hello again. And thanks for getting back to me.

Yeah, I did some more research and decided to scrap the idea! So, now I have a digital air con controller and no use for it! Back to ebay...