Originally Posted by Dabee
The windows on my 55 fog up really bad in cold or wet weather. I beat it with liberal amounts of RainX on the outside and RainX ant fog on the inside. The problem is my classic air AC Heater system doesn’t circulate fresh air from outside to remove the moisture inside the cab.


This is the primary reason I used the heat/ac box out of the Dakota. That box has a fresh air duct at the top of it (Pic 1, extreme right side of the pic about center of the frame, the black oval.) You can also see the Dakota duct work mounted to the cowl, It attaches to the heater box on the smaller square to the left of the outlet with the green foam (The green foam is the AC outlet, I do not have the AC functioning yet.). I am never concerned about heat, all the air in the heat/defrost part runs through the defroster duct. There is enough heat in the cab through the defroster duct work to make the cab very comfortable after a few miles of driving, if the cab is sealed well enough. To me seeing is more important then being warm.

Pic 2 is the hole I cut into the cowl for fresh air. It is about 3" high x 5" wide. on the left side of the hole you can see the fresh air inlet for the Dakota Heater box. If you were looking straight at it, that inlet for the Dakota heater is centered in the opening. I made a simple duct work to connect the hole with the heater inlet out of light gauge sheet metal.

Pic 3, The hole I cut probably can get water flow from under the hood when it rains. This picture shows how I built up a water trough for the water to run around both sides of the hole. Everything clears the hood by about 1/4". I can't find a picture of the duct work I made, I was sure I took pics, but who knows at this point.

Pic 4 shows the cover I use through the summer. Without the cover, there is a lot of under the hood heat comes into the cab. The cover hooks under the top edge and over both sides and is held in place with two screws on the bottom edge. When the truck got painted, the entire cowl above the body seam was painted body color. I have not removed the cover yet this year, but with the predicted temps for the next 10 days, I will likely remove it tomorrow. With the cover painted body color, it blends in nicely, it may not look so pretty after its been removed and installed a few times, but that sort of thing comes with it being a daily driver.

If I can't find pictures of the duct work between the cowl hole and the heater box, I'll try to get a couple then. Gene

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