cold heaters - bleeding the heater

G

gary smith

New Member
Hi everyon I,ve just replaced the antifreeze in my 2200 and I,m left with cold heaters,I,ve bled these systems in the past by removing the top heater hose and waiting for water to run from the metal heater pipe near the bulkhead, but I can,t remember if the car needs to be on fast tickover or just normal? any idea,s cheers gary.
 
If the matrix is ok, it sounds like an airlock in the heater matrix to me.

The method I use to cure this without the engine on. Take the radiator filler cap off and remove the input hose from the engine to the matrix. With a funnel, pour an antifreeze mix in, until it spills out from the filler cap neck and brimming it right up to the end of the hose.

Put a finger over the hose and quickly fit it back to the engine.

Putting the heater fan on and leaving the filler cap off, I turn the engine over and run it on idle to wait for the level to stabilise and then top up as required.

Typically this problem happens in the first place due to a bad seal that expands with the heat of the water and leaks creating a airlock so check all the hose seals.
 
I usually just whip the hose off with the engine runnig and wait till the water splashes all over the place and stick the hose back on, wiping the anitfreze mix from my safety goggles after tightening up the hose clip...:p
 
Thanks for the suggestions,when I removed the input hose water was running from the inlet manifold staight away (TC model) so I guess there was no air lock up to there.Followed on with the other method but just a trickle from the metal outlet pipe unless the car was revved up,am I right in thinking it should be a strong flow of water when ticking over?cheers gary.
 
I have an sc so guess plumbing is different. Make sure the engine is fully warmed up. I think water flow rate into heater should be same flow rate exiting - if not I guess your heater matrix is choked up - plenty of old posts on this, you will need to reverse flulsh heater with a hose first, then try some sort of radflush system to clean out the cooling system - if this does not improve things looks like your heater matrix is to chocked up and will need re-cored
 
One such quick wheeze is to disconnect all the matrix hoses from the engine. Reverse flush the matrix using the lowest output hose as an input that really can remove a lot of crud.

Alternatively or after that, bung up the outputs, make up a concentrated cold solution of something like 'Scale Away' or other citric acid compound and add this to the matrix.

Then pour in some boiling water to activate the compound. Stop the whole lot up for 30 mins to 1 hour and then flush with copious amount of water.

I've never tried this but I have heard it works very well.
 
Thanks for that roverton found the problem, stuck thermostat typical that,s what I get for overlooking yhe obvious.cheers gary
 
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