austinado16

Most of you will remember the catastrophic failure of my heater core last spring......

Fast forward to today; my daughter has her first gymnastics competition 170mi north in the Santa Cruz area. We're 2mi from the event location on the freeway (Highway 17 aka "blood alley" for the locals) when poof.......solid white "smoke" comes pouring out of all the vents, so thick that I can barely see out. Coolant vaporizing, of course, except for the solid spray of coolant blasting out onto my feet and my wife's.

I'm scrambling to get my fogged sunglasses off, get the windows open, somehow keep my foot on the gas, and get the car off the freeway without augering it into a guardrail. F@#% ME!!!!

I've got no tools in the car and we've got to be at the gym in about :45min.

I dive for a freeway offramp, see a sandwich shop and pull in there thinking the girls can have lunch while I either Mcguiver this POS back together, or snap the key off in the ignition, put a brick on the accelerator and walk away.

I find an old slotted screwdriver down next to the spare and use it take both heater hoses off the heater core fittings. Then I break the vacuum operated heater valve off the side of the heater box so that I can turn it at enough of an angle that I can get both heater hoses hooked into it.

Then I start pouring in the hot water from a small food prep buck the sandwich shop keeps feeling for me. The coolant bottle is boiling over, I can't keep water in it, and the clock is ticking......

Finally I get it "burped" enough that we can get the 2mi to the gym, drop the girls off and head for a Shell station that I see actually has a mechanic on duty.

I limp in there, tell him about my situ, and get told he couldn't possible get to me today. I say....."Of course you can't, I'm just looking for a scrap of hose, or some pipe I can make a "U" shaped fitting out of, so I can do a better job of connecting up the heater hoses and I'll be on my way."

Nope, he isn't willing to help and tells me there's a car parts store just down the road 1/4mi. Off I go, and at "Winchester Auto Parts" in Santa Cruz, I find probably one of the best auto parts stores I've ever come across....and I thought we had a great NAPA store here in town! The guys were super helpful and we created a nice little "U" shaped 3/4" diameter section of bulk heater hose, 2 plastic barb fittings, and hose clamps and I was on my way.

Once the coolant was able to better flow through the heater hoses, I was able to get a good burp on the system, top it off and we drove the 170mi home no problem.

So....did I get a POS of a heater core this past spring? Or.....do I have a slightly blown headgasket that's over pressurizing the system and popped the new heater core.

Or......do I throw in the towel and start frequenting the Ford Focus forum and chatting up Daveinsaltlake's wife?

Stay tuned!

DaveInSaltLake

Where did you get your heater core?

I've been eyeballing the AutohausAZ cores, but won't buy one until I have the time to research quality a little bit.

PS...you'll have a better chance of finding her here:<ul><li><a href="http://www.clubpenguin.com/">http://www.clubpenguin.com/</a</li></ul>

4Driver4

That sucks. Where did you get the core?

kday

I have the autohausaz core in my S4, so far so good (2 years plus)...

austinado16

Locally from a German car parts source. I think it was a Valeo or similar OEM flavor

austinado16

When I was at the VW dealer, Volkswagen recalled all heater cores in everything from '85-'92....Golf, Jetta, Corrado, as well as all the VW Fox heater cores.

It was for this very reason...burning people's feet and filling the car with steam during driving.

I'm pretty pissed off about this!

kday

Yeah, that's really lame. FWIW, my old one didn't leak, just replaced proactivly.

Bmthorn

You've got my sympathy, heater cores are no fun at all!

islingtonaudi

Mine was replaced under warranty for the original owner around 25k.

A6Gary

Can't imagine why your core failed once, let alone a second time.