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The blonde (wife) is very rarely in the car. When she is she never notices the heating or cooling as she's rightly focussed on keeping her hair looking fantastic.

The blond (Golden Retriever) spends more time in the car than the blonde but doesn't care how much heating or cooling he gets. He just loves being in the car. Good on 'im. He's learned to lie down whenever he sees a roundabout coming up, by the way.

So, for the 95+% of the time I'm solo, what's the easiest way to block off or disable the vents on the passenger side so that, hopefully, the driver's side gets 2 x the heating or cooling effect?

NB: Yes, Cool Breeze Scoop is on order.

Dave, I think the easiest way would be to remove the two eyeball vents in question, place a suitably sized piece of dark coloured foam in each vent, & then replace the eyeball vents.

Remove the glove box and have a look at the heater/cooler unit, you might be able to pop the pipe to the passenger side air vent off, then just block that up with something that won't melt. At least then your car will keep looking stock.

Some gauges in there

SuperMazdaKart wrote:Some gauges in there

Erm ....????

gauges into where the vents are

SuperMazdaKart wrote:gauges into where the vents are

Ah, the penny drops ......

Put gauges into the nearside vents to stop the vents letting air through? Get the passenger to tell me what the gauges read?

Just put something of lesser importance that hardly ever needs attention on the passenger side. Like a volt meter.

Ring up Mazda and see if the NC series 'eyeballs' will fit in your car. On the NC, they have a little button in the middle that will close the vent off.

On the NC, Mazda puts them on the 'outsides'... ie, at the ends of the dashboard, while the two in the middle are always open. If I ever have to take the dash out I'd like to swap them around so that the two for the driver are always open and I can close of the ones on the passenger side when there's nobody in the seat.

Okibi wrote:Remove the glove box and have a look at the heater/cooler unit, you might be able to pop the pipe to the passenger side air vent off, then just block that up with something that won't melt. At least then your car will keep looking stock.

Gonna have a go at this tomorrow.

Any other tips from anyone?

Any suggestions for the "something that won't melt" or smell?

I doubt if the premise is right- ie block off a vent and it will increase performance to open vents. Check with an aircond specialist. Heating in the NB is very effective often with the need to switch the fan off- air cond is marginal on really hot days. The air cond on a modern big sedan or SUV is likely to be better than the MX5- that is my experience.

Put the roof down and drive faster if your hot! If it cold just put the roof down and drive faster but wear a pair of gloves and a beanie.

deviant wrote:Put the roof down and drive faster if your hot! If it cold just put the roof down and drive faster but wear a pair of gloves and a beanie.

Thanks Deviant. As a self-confessed saddo, I have the gloves, the beanie, neck-warmer, and a variety of other highly unfashionable top-half clothing items which help. I just want even more comfort sometimes and I do know that a little, light car won't have the same heating/cooling capacity of a large one. Nor will it normally need as much capacity. But I do cover a lot of kilometres and prefer to have the roof down whenever possible. I realise that some people think I should get a different car to get different results but I'm going to keep doing my best to get BARMY to do as nearly as possible everything I want him to do - in one car.

Having the boost gauge removed from the far right air vent and put under the new single DIN head unit has enabled me to get that air vent back into use. So my right hand side no longer freezes if I put the roof and window down in really cold weather.

I've noticed that often more warm air, rather than hotter air, seems to be the key to keeping comfortably warm. That's why I'm looking at blocking off the passenger side vents, so more air is available more controllably on the driver's side.

That could be done just by putting foam in all the passenger side outlets but I'd prefer to stop air going into the steel tube that feeds the passenger side vents altogether. So there'll be some dismanting going on this evening so see how best to do this.

Anyone got advice on doing this before I start?