When we added some big shocks and shock hoops, we had to ditch the blower motor and subsequently lose all climate control in a removable top K5 Blazer. This was fine most of the time in Southern California, but when we started crossing state lines and hitting snow during off-roading trips, a heater was a sought-after item. When we got home, the first call we made was to Flex-a-lite, makers of the Mojave Heater. We had heard of these little units forever but hadn't actually tried one yet. Our lack of knowledge on them led us to believe they were completely electric, but when we opened the package we found that we still needed to run heater hose lines to bring coolant in and out of the cab. This made our initial installation plans a little more difficult, but we realized that the amperage load that would be necessary to run a purely electric heater would be more than running multiple air compressors. Therefore, the electrical hook-ups on the Mojave Heater are for the fan motor control, while heater hose inlet and outlet are for supplying the heat. As soon as it was installed and we had our vehicle warmed up (remember that the warmth comes from your engine coolant), we switched the Mojave Heater on and were blasted by some heat waves. 1. The Mojave Heater has some simple wiring to power the blower fan and to control the unit. The two heater hose connections are for running coolant through, just like your vehicle's original heater core does.1. The Mojave Heater has some simple wiring to power the blower fan and to control the uni 2. The Mojave Heater uses coolant to heat up a radiating core inside its housing. On either side of the Mojave Heater, there are inlets for air that blow out through the radiating core. This is the same way that your vehicle's original heater works. It's capable of pushing out 12,000 BTUs at 140 cubic feet per minute (CFM).2. The Mojave Heater uses coolant to heat up a radiating core inside its housing. On eithe 3. Though the installation of the Mojave Heater is fairly simple, it is somewhat time-consuming. The heater hoses that go to the Mojave Heater must be connected to the feed and return connections on the water pump and engine. That means you'll have to go through your firewall, and this can be done drilling all new holes or by reusing part of your old heater core. We simply cut the end tubes off of our heater core (behind the dash), connected heater hoses from them to the Mojave Heater, and changed nothing inside the engine compartment.3. Though the installation of the Mojave Heater is fairly simple, it is somewhat time-cons 4. The fan speed is controlled with a supplied rotary knob that you can mount on your dash. We simply drilled a hole just left of our original climate control controls.4. The fan speed is controlled with a supplied rotary knob that you can mount on your dash 5. We chose to mount our Mojave Heater directly on the transmission tunnel. Unfortunately, our tunnel was just an inch too skinny to thread bolts into the fastening holes on the Mojave Heater without them hanging visibly down. We instead got really generous with double-sided sticky tape and went to town making sure this thing would hold to our floor. So far, it's held really well. The key to successful sticky taping is the cleaning prep of the surfaces.5. We chose to mount our Mojave Heater directly on the transmission tunnel. Unfortunately, Sources Flex-A-Lite 7213-45th St Ct E Fife WA 98424 800-851-1510 www.flex-a-lite.com By Jerrod Jones Enjoyed this Post? Subscribe to our RSS Feed, or use your favorite social media to recommend us to friends and colleagues!
