Source for Heatilator vent covers?

[sylvestermcmonkey]

My brick fireplace has four vents on its vertical face that seem to indicate a Heatilator or something equivalent to it had been originally installed. It was common to find this in homes 30 years ago. I want to replace the vent covers which are rusty and ugly but am coming up empty finding a replacement.

The vent covers measure 7 7/8 in square with two mounting holes 7 9/16 inch apart. Kind of a odd dimension until you realize it's equivalent to three courses of bricks and mortar. They have horizontal slats spaced 1/4 in apart. These dimensions don't correspond to anything used in conventional forced air systems or other things that use vents, unless I'm missing something. There might be suitable equivalents in use for masonry construction but I don't know where to start looking.

The Heatilator has been rendered inoperative but it would be nice to preserve the hearth's original appearance. In other words I don't want to simply cover the holes. I'd strip and paint the ones I have but one of them has a couple bent slats.

Heatilator is still in business but I believe these vents are obsolete. Anyone know of a source?

 

[Shane]

Maybe your local sheet metal shop, or even a body shop can fab them for you. I can't imagine it would be too costly.

 

[sylvestermcmonkey]

A couple of pics to illustrate. Ignore the scale in the second one - the ruler isn't against the cover. Hard to believe I couldn't find new replacements - these are in just about every house built around here twenty, thirty years ago.

 

[begreen]

From what's shown, they don't look that bad. I'd wirebrush and sand the rust down, carefully straighten any bent fins, then prime and paint them. It shouldn't take more than an hour and you'd have exactly matched parts.

If you can't find the original part you might try looking for an 8 x 8, stamp-faced return air grille.
Here's a link to an 8x8 return air grille.
http://americanhvacparts.com/Mercha...OD&Product_Code=RET8X8SF&Category_Code=Reg-14

 

[sylvestermcmonkey]

If they're as difficult to find as it seems I'll probably do that, although it will take me about an hour for each one. They really aren't that bad, only one has a bent fin. I don't think it can be straightened - once a fin is bent it's stretched and the only way to fix that is to shrink it back to the original length. I wouldn't bead blast them for the same reason. One side will shrink or stretch and then you have a mess.

I've researched the return air grille idea - the mounting hole spacing is different.