Every winter its the same, we get a hard frost, I leave the bike in the garage and opt to take the car to work, at least I could if the window hadn't frozen itself to the top of the car stopping it from dropping, or the door has frozen itself to the door frame. Bit embarrasing not being able to get into my mega car without having to stand outside it in the freezing cold for 20 minutes waving a hairdryer over the door.
Well last years temp drop to -17.6c broke the camels back and I ordered a Defa Fan heater for the interior. For a laugh I did enquire about a full on remote controlled Webasto System but at £1750 I decided the Defa at £69 represented better value at the expense of convenience. Ordered it mid December, it didn't arrive until mid January (because of the snow ), and on a 3 degree weekend I set about fitting it.
I wanted to mount it semi premamently so I could leave it hooked up but out of the way for the winter and just unplug and remove it come spring. Not to many options for this in the E31 but I bodged up a mount out of an old USB case and hooked it onto the front seat flap.
I then cut into the cabling and a short distance from the unit put an in-line 2 pin connector. The rest of the cable I ran under the seat carpet to the side of the car then back to the boot and exiting the car via the vents in the rear wing. From there round and down to the rear bumper where I fitted a female 2 pin connector with a waterproof cap and velcro'd it inside the rear diffuser.
If I want to use it I have to reel an extension lead out to the car, just reach under the diffuser for the plug and connect to the extension lead via a 2 pin to 3 pin adapter cable I made up.
All fitted and finished I waited to use it. The temperature promply rose to 10 degrees and stayed there so we had no more frosts and I never got to try.
However I hooked it back up 2 weeks ago and this morning we had a frost so I gave it a try. Started with this:
Went inside for a bowl of cereal and approx 10 minutes later went for a look.
2 minutes to hook up, no scraping windows, spraying de-icer around or standing there with a hairdryer and i get to climb into a warm car. Might not be a manufacturer standard fit but it does the job. Cool.