Td5 D2 bodywork - Heater Blower Hole (5)

Following on from the recent work around the Heatwer Blower inlet 'leak', I began to fashion a cover plate for it from the paper template made earlier by 'rubbing' the outline of the intake.

Dug out the remains of an old aluminium printing plate. I recall the image on the plate is from a college project nearly 30 years ago!!

The plate is thick enough to be rigid yet can be easily worked with hand-tools.

When I got down to it though, I felt that trying to get it into a final fitted position would be a challenge as the plenum cover is still in place. I elected to use thinner catering foil trays thinking they would be easier to 'work' under the circumstances. 

Still a work in progress. I have strengthened certain areas by glueing extra pieces of the aluminium tray together.

Although the last image shows near enough the finished cover, trial fittings have shown I need to fashion some kind of fitting for the front edge to the plenum cover.... There is very little space between the top of the intake lip and the underneath of the fitted plastic plenum cover above it, and care is needed to get the intake 'covered' yet still allow air to enter and any water to drain from its surface.

I began to question the whole notion of rainwater entering the intake directly through its opening.  Also, started to question why the intake is the size it is. ? And why does it have that particular shape/outline?

Don't know anything (yet!) about air flow volumes in heating and ventilating systems, but looking at that photo looking down into the blower body, the blower wheel seems small compared to the inlet. ..

I know that the design of the intake inlet remained unchanged throughout the 15 year production of D1 and D2. That makes me wonder if the intake 'moulding' had indeed been 'imported' from an earlier vehicles' design? Maybe even a Leyland bus or truck??

While I mused over that,  I decided to apply some 'Granville clear silicone sealant ' to the area identified the other day with the borroscope. The sealer comes in a handy small tube that allows access to awkward areas. ... ideal!  

I smeared a good coating of the stuff between bolt 3 and 4 making sure the joint with the metal bodywork was covered. 

That was done a few days ago and since then there has been a few prolonged downpours but there has been no visible leakage into the footwell. I have even physically checked the area around the blower motor mounting which is the leak point and it was dry. 

Encouraged by this,  I have decided to monitor the situation before fitting the intake cover.

Fingers crossed...