Jet Jockey/A4 Pilot

Well since I added some weight in the car lately, I needed to compensate for that. So I’m putting the car on a diet and nothing is left out to get the weight off.

Last year while we were building the roll cage I had already cut down on the HVAC’s weight by basically removing everything except the OE blower and main OE air ducting to the defrost area.

Well that was too heavy and I came up with a novel idea! Here we go…

Here’s what was left of the OE Audi HVAC system in my car; far right is the air intake box and underneath it is where the fan motor is housed. In the centre we find the duct that funnels the air into the main area where the heater core is located. All that left of that portion is the defrost section.




The right and centre portion that I want to get rid of. A lot of weight is located in that area because of the fan blower.




Here’s another view of the housing where the blower sits.




Well here’s what I found to replace the heavy OE fan/motor… A small light weight blower used to evacuate the fumes from a boat’s engine compartment. It’s only 5 inches long, weighs a meager 12.9 ounces and moves 230 CFM of air!




It’s only 4 inches in diameter too.




So in the end I cut the assembly in two, discarding the intake box/fan housing.




The fan housing and its bracket weigh in at 26 ounces, not bad I saved 13.1 ounces so far.




But here’s the big savings; the OE fan/motor, it weighs in at 4 lbs!




The only problem now was how to fit a blower with a 4 inch round diameter into a square piece of plastic. Well we made a custom Fiberglass mating shroud. In the initial process here the new fan is installed into the OE duct. Then they used aluminium tape and covered it in plastic.




Then the Fiberglass sheet is added to it.




Then the resin is applied to the Fiberglass and let to dry.




Once dried up the new part is removed and cleaned up.




It is then test fitted on the OE duct.




Then the new fan is test fitted on the new shroud.