Fleetwood (or any LT1 car) heater hose valve replacement
Posted: Tue Nov 12, 2013 10:36 pm
So I was pulling off the highway and noticed clouds of steam billowing out from under the hood. Further inspection revealed one of the nipples on the heater hose restricter valve (aka Coolant Flow Control Valve) had broken off causing hot coolant to spray all over everything. Conveniently, I had replaced this part in the Caprice relatively recently, so I knew I had a spare good one. Unfortunately, I forgot how annoying this swap was. Ed was kind enough to remove a large section of the Caprice's heater hose assembly and bring it to me in a random Shell station parking lot where the "repair" was made. Some time later everything is fine and the Fleetwood is now the proud owner of a couple pieces of HD silicon heater hoses. For now.
The issue with this system is several of the connections between rubber hose and plastic value/tee are crimped on by compression clamps, like what you see on A/C hoses. When I did the Caprice job initially, I managed to reinstall the valve without needing to remove the compression clamp somehow. When removing parts from the Fleetwood, I also managed to destroy the tee in the system, so I was forced to use that part of the Caprice assembly too.
I ordered some replacement valves and tees to replace all of the old ones on the LT1 cars here. So I will upload pics later of my attempts to either reuse the compression clamps or (more likely) remove the compression clamps and the overall rebuild of the heater hose assembly. Valve: http://www.rmsautoparts.com/proddetail. ... 423&cat=83, tee: http://www.rmsautoparts.com/proddetail. ... d=12522867
Hey, at least I found out what the slow coolant leak and occasional smell is from! In hindsight, that valve should have been the first thing I checked.
The issue with this system is several of the connections between rubber hose and plastic value/tee are crimped on by compression clamps, like what you see on A/C hoses. When I did the Caprice job initially, I managed to reinstall the valve without needing to remove the compression clamp somehow. When removing parts from the Fleetwood, I also managed to destroy the tee in the system, so I was forced to use that part of the Caprice assembly too.
I ordered some replacement valves and tees to replace all of the old ones on the LT1 cars here. So I will upload pics later of my attempts to either reuse the compression clamps or (more likely) remove the compression clamps and the overall rebuild of the heater hose assembly. Valve: http://www.rmsautoparts.com/proddetail. ... 423&cat=83, tee: http://www.rmsautoparts.com/proddetail. ... d=12522867
Hey, at least I found out what the slow coolant leak and occasional smell is from! In hindsight, that valve should have been the first thing I checked.