At 09:42 AM 6/16/97 -0500, you wrote:
>I have a coolant leak in my "74. At first I thought it might be a loose
>freeze plug or leaky head gasket, but close examination ruled out these
>possibilities. Could it be the heater core or one of the hoses near the
>firewall? Does anyone have experience with this type of problem?
George,
I doubt it if you thought it was a freeze plug. Where is the leak? The
heater core is inside the car. The 2 pipes from the heater core come into
the plenumn on the pass. side where it connects to the 2 rubber heater hoses.
If the core is gone, I'd expect the coolant to be on the inside of the car.
To replace the heater core requires pulling the entire heater box. The
easiest way to get access to it is by pulling the dash. I've never tried
to remove the heater box with the dash inplace.
It is possible that the inlet pipes to the core have sprung a leak and
is "peeing" into the engine compartment but I would doubt that. The
easyest way to check this out is to cut the heater hose that goes to the
conical metal valve that has a vaccumn line it in and insert either an
additional cutoff switch (available at most auto parts store) or cut both
of the hoses and splice them together to bypass the heater. Probably
not a bad idea in the summer any way unless you are having overheating
problems and are using the heater as an additional radiator.
Besure to let us know what you find out.
John
>
John T. Blair WA4OHZ email: jblair@nhr.com
Va. Beach, Va Phone: (757) 495-8229
48 TR1800 48 #4 Midget 65 Morgan 4/4 Series V
75 Bricklin SV1 77 Spitfire
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