Heater Valve

While messing about in the car trying to figure out how everything worked, I pulled the heater lever and poof a cloud of steam engulfed the car as boiling coolant filled the passenger side foot well. Oh come on! I switched the engine off and had a closer look to find the heater valve had let go and dumped all the coolant into the car.

All that fibrous sound deadening was ruined. I had to rip it all out. And leave the car to dry in the sun for a few days. Eventually dry, I don't really need a heater in California and I didn't have the budget to fix it right now. So I bypassed the heater using some coolant hose and a Prestone flush kit T-piece. And we are off to the races again.

Coolant Hoses

First thing was to make sure this would withstand Californian heat. The radiator hoses were all soft and bulging. The amount the top hose expanded when the water temp came up was frightening. So I knew I had to change all the hoses. I eventually pieced together a hose kit (later I found that some suppliers sell it as a kit already), with a new thermostat and installed the hoses.

When I removed the external thermostat to replace it, it had been cored out. Totally hollow. This was a little worrying. Was the car overheating? Was the radiator fan or switch not working?

In order to bleed the system I parked the car up on a ramp in order to get the top radiator hose to be above the heater hose. After fully bled. I tried to get it to overheat by leaving it idling. The temp went up and as soon as it crossed over half way, the radiator fan switched on and temp went down immediately. Result!