What a sweet smell! Oh its leaking.

sicK96GT said:

Im not sure what its made out of, but being that it cracked somewhere its prob plastic. I remember when I was in high school hearing my dad bitching about replacing his heater core on his truck, I called to ask him about it and he just laughed and said have fun.


I hope bypassing it works because I dont have time for about a week to pull the dash apart.

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heater cores are ALWAYS metal, there is no such thing as a plastic heater core. it is basicly a small radiator that air is blown across to provide heat..

you can bypass it and then worry about it latter.

BTW there is no way to just hack repair it, the dash has to come out just to access the core.

sicK96GT said:

Im guessing my radiator cap is bad now because when she gets a little hot starts to boil out of the cap, car doesnt overheat at all stays below 180-200.

new cap fixes this?

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you have air pockets in the cooling system, bleed the system before you pop a headgasket...

one way you can get air pockets out is too remove the coolant temp sensor and fill until some coolant comes out of the temp sensor boss. then run the engine at 2k rpm's for a few minutes and check the coolant level.

i've seen a couple heater cores with plastic end-caps and plastic tubes... And that is what usually goes (at least on the "plastic" heater cores). I wouldn't be surprized if almost all current heater cores are made that way.
In most cases it is typically age that gets to the cores or if you have a bad mix on you antifreeze and cold temps freeze the fluid in the core.

All the ones I have ever seen are Ally and the dash does have to come out as prior comments stated.

They have a plastic screw type widget insert inside that basically slows down the water enough to allow transfer of heat to the core.

On the one I had the widget wore a hole in the one of the Ally bars and of course leaked everywhere. The carpet smelled like coolent for weeks after.

Of course the worst part for me was:
A)taking dash out,
B)trying to put it back in,
C)trying to stop the dash from sqweaking after it's put back in.

This was not on a my stang though.