The left side defroster has never worked since the day I bought the car. I figured out early on that the paper hose to that vent was ripped. I tried to repair it with duct tape but just made it worse. So I just lived with it and for years I relied solely on the right defroster vent to defrost as much of the window as possible, which was unsurprisingly only about 50%. Thankfully the vents can be twisted around so I was able to defrost the drivers side of the window.

I posted a question to the vsaab mailing list and found out that the defroster tubing is readily available. Any 2 inch hose would work. I ordered the Dorman 96002 708-083 hose, which is 2" in diameter and 72" long. The diameter was perfect. Obviously 72" is much longer than needed. I think you could replace both defroster vents hoses with just this one kit.

The problem with replacing this line is disconnecting the old line from behind the dash by the vent hole. On my 1974 Sonett, the tube was screwed in place. I could only see the screw because I had recently removed my factory air conditioning controls and thus had a huge rectangular hole in my dash right in front of the left defroster vent. Using that hole, I could see the screw. I couldn't get a screw driver on it however. I believe it is IMPOSSIBLE to remove that screw with the dash installed.

I ended up drilling a hole in the metal dash support that runs across underneath the dash. I put the hole right by the headlight control rod. The result was that I could get a screw driver up through that new hole and unscrew the phillips screw that was holding the vent tube in place. When I installed the new vent line, I left the screw out. I don't think its necessary since its a pretty tight fit just getting the tubing through a hole in the fiberglass.

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Smll Med Lrg The outside diameter of the old paper/cardboard tubing is a little over 2 inches	Smll Med Lrg	Smll Med Lrg this stuff was very easy to work with	Smll Med Lrg with my A/C controls removed you can see the fiberglass vent
Smll Med Lrg notice that crappy screw that holds the vent tubing in the fiberglass vent channel	Smll Med Lrg looking up, there is an extra metal reinforcement on the vent	Smll Med Lrg I ended up drilling a hole through the metal support so I could get a screw driver up to the screw	Smll Med Lrg my old ripped and poorly repaired vent line
Smll Med Lrg the only part I need to keep is the plastic part	Smll Med Lrg the vent cover removed from the dash	Smll Med Lrg now you can clearly see where the screw came up into the vent tube	Smll Med Lrg I pulled the old tubing out in a long strip
Smll Med Lrg installing the new tubing was much easier once I removed the instrument cluster	Smll Med Lrg visible is the AC vent tubing. The defroster tubing will go in front of it	Smll Med Lrg	Smll Med Lrg You can barely see the blower output hole that the defroster line normally covers over
Smll Med Lrg the new tube run into the fiberglass cavity for the defroster	Smll Med Lrg the new defroster tubing visible behind the instrument cluster	Smll Med Lrg new tubing with original plastic manifold (i guess thats what its called)	Smll Med Lrg everything reattached. The defroster vent works again!