legacycentral bbs

A short precurser. I dropped my car off to have the front drivers CV changed and new coolant put in. Picked up the car and driving home it started to overheat. Took it back and turns out they flushed the coolant system with water knocking something loose and plugging my radiator. F'ing sweet. So I spend the money to get a new radiator and I'm heading out of town so I just leave it with the shop. For 35 dollars I'd just as soon not deal with it. I pick it up and everything is running great.

Now this morning it's cold and I need to turn on the defrost. And rather than clearing my window it just starts getting worse and worse. And then I smell anti-freeze, inside the cabin. Thankfully it's a short drive to work as I can't see anything out my windshield. I pull into the parking lot and I turn on one of the overhead lights and there is a very distinct mist floating around inside my cabin. Needless to say this concerns me on several levels. Both as a health issue that I was breathing this crap and also as an issue of WTF? Does my heater core have a leak in it? Living in Northern Idaho and winter around the bend, this causes me some concern. I don't understand how filling the coolant back up would cause this. It's never done this before.

Any suggestions, comments, etc.?

Thanks.

i know how it is to have all this stuff happen at the same time. its too bad. might have just been your heater cores time. they go bad, not often but they do. i would pull that core to take a look. thank god they are not that hard to replace.

I thought I had to pull the dash to get to the heater core? I have no desire to do this. I also don't really have a good place to drain the coolant at my apt.

I was thinking of just running a bottle of stop leak through it. It is definately the core. I ran out for lunch and there is a steady cloud coming out of the vents. Shit can't be good for my health so I'm going to put a bottle of stop leak in it right after work.

Is our core Al or steel?

its aluminum. to replace the core you just have to take out the glove compartment.

Really, that's it? I may have to look into this if the stop-leak doesn't work.

Thank you.

Well stop-leak didn't do the trick. Time to search up on how to change out the heater core unless I can talk my shop into doing it for free.

why ever would you use stop leak?

it does not work.

it only clogs stuff up.

change the heater core.

Wrong.....to get the heater core out, you have to remove the dash. It's no fun.

Thats what I thought lol.

As far as the stop leak. I have several car savey friends who've had good sucess with stop leak. Considering I have to pull the dash to change it, yeah I thought I'd try a 5 dollar 15 minute fix first.

I will start in on the dash tomorrow. I am not looking forward to this but in northern Idaho it's not an option to bypass it.

What are the odds of keeping my AC system charged? Any tips on pulling the dash?

I remember there was one dude who had to pull the dash. Took him a day except he got a core from a junkyard that had a leak as well and had to pull the dash twice! Some good tips would be to either pull out the seats or lie them back.