Found this l;ittle treasure at the swap meet car show in Winnipeg today. As usual i buy something i realy don't need but had to have it. It's a little heater ***y . Says 'TROPIC-AIRE HEATER' on the core shell. Made by minneapolis-aire inc. I'm thinking minniaplois moline tractor but a closed cab tractor back then? Anyone know more about these. Plans are to nickel plate the shell and put it in my 28 rpu for those chilly spring, fall days we get here in Canada.
I had the core in mine cleaned & checked at the local radiator shop. I removed the big 6V fan & added a new Spal puller fan that I bought on Ebay. Ended up with about $100 in mine. It's slated for duty in my RPU. Good score on the Tropic-Aire. Those are cool. I think yours originally had two doors on the front. JH
I don't see any mounting locations for doors so i think it had any. Cool little heater you have there.
Tropic-aire was one a**** dozens of brands of aftermarket accessory heaters that were on the market back in the late '20w, '30s and '40s. The Tropic-aire heater you have is late '20s or early '30s vintage. Back then, few cars or trucks came with a factory installed heater. Even heaters that carried the car maker's name were dealer installed as most optional equipment was back then. Most people bought one of the aftermarket heaters instead of buying one from the car dealer. People who were cheap or on a tight budget would even go to a salvage yard and get a used heater, so it's not unusual to find a heater that's even older than the car or truck it's in. Harrison, the GM subsidiary that made radiators and heaters for GM vehicles wisely cashed in on the aftermarket sales--virtually the same heaters that were sold through the dealers with the Chevy, Pontiac, Olds, etc. name on them were sold through the aftermarket with the Harrison name on them. I have a '30s vintage Hot Wave brand heater in my '38 Ford pickup, a friend of mine has a comparable vintage Arvin that he's restoring for use in his '21 Studebaker roadster. All the restorers want the "correct" factory approved heaters for their cars. The aftermarket accessory heaters are cheap and plentiful since the restorers generally don't want them even though they're a great period-correct accessory, not difficult to restore and make them look really nice. Most of the time the cores are OK or at least repairable; worst case scenario, if you have to replace the core, a heater core for an early ('83-'92) Ford Ranger is about the right size to fit many of them. The most basic of these accessory heaters was just a box with a heater core and an electric fan behind it; the better ones also included a squirrel cage fan for defrost and defroster duct connections, also the better ones had vent doors that could be used to aim the heat where you wanted it.
Thanks for the input. The fact it had some nickel plating on it guessed it might be 20s 30s. Which would kinda fit the area of my rpu. I never realy paid much attention to old heaters and their history. Thanks for the tip on the Ranger swap.
Tedley, My braincells aint what they used to be but I am pretty sure you are correct in that Minny-Molene did in fact make an enclosed cab tractor about 70 some odd years ago. It was more or less billed as the tractor you could take to town. Next time you pop into chapters you might want to have a look at the antique tractor books that they have in the transportation section. I remember seeing the minny-molene enclosed cab tractors listed in a friends (old farmer) coffee table book. They had a wide cab and could accommodate the wifey. I seem to recall that they marketed them in the 30's. .
I'm pretty sure that the square block in the center of yours would have accepted a convoluted little bolt & clip that would have held two doors on. Similar to the Hadees pictured below. JH
Without the doors, I'd look into a small emblem/badge type decoration to go over the square block in the center. JH
The Jalopy Journal
