Tuesday 4 March 2008

Slow progress on heater rebuild

A bit of news on the TR7 front at last. After having found out that the heater radiator itself was leaking, first thought was to go for an AC heater unit as they are more effective in demisting the front screen. I picked one from my stock of heaters with the idea of cleaning and checking it before putting it in the car. But as this one also had some leak traces I thought better of it. The fact that they are rather heavy did help in the decision to use the original one. So another browse through my parts stock left me with what looked like a good radiator;



Cleaning it out revealed no visible leaks and also the flow seemed to be OK. But as I don’t fancy pulling the heater out of the car every few months, I thought it a good idea to have it professionally tested. Both pressure and flow tests gave a 100% score.

Next job was to get some new seals for the inlet and outlet pipes. At first I thought the old seals could be reused as they were still very flexible, but I decided to order some new ones. Just to be safe! As you can see in picture below that was a good decision;



On the left is the old one, the new one’s on the right. The difference in inside diameter, and with that it’s sealing abilities, is quite clear.
Next job, scheduled for this weekend, will be removing the dashboard and heater out of the car. I hate that job, but it's less than two weeks before the Nacht van het Oosten. Hopefully I’ll get her ready in time, as I like to use ‘t Kreng for this event!

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