So my chinesium coolant heater finally arrived in the mail yesterday, and I test fired it today. Looked good, sounded good, but I didn't let it run long enough to fully heat up because the exhaust pipe started burning the grass. Thankfully it had rained last night.
Next step is mounting it, but I am running into an issue. My original idea is mounting to the frame just behind the driver's seat (under the floor, obviously). However, when I hold a cutout of the approximate size of the heater up to the frame, I run into 2 issues. Firstly, only one row of bolts will line up, top or bottom. That's easily overcome. Problem 2 is the real kicker:
Those are the air lines running along the bottom of the cutout. The exhaust is on the bottom. I can almost see losing air pressure on the freeway now...
I could try to reroute them or push them out of the way, but at some location that exhaust will get near the plastic.
So I turn around and BAM:
That's the skirt of the bus just opposite my intended site on the frame. Sizing and location look good, but I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the idea of mounting this to the skirt. I'm mostly concerned about the structural integrity of this skirt, less so the potential theft.
Does anyone know of a better location? Has anyone mounted something structurally to the skirt of the bus, or know whether or not it would work?