Peugeot 306 heater matrix

that's why I turn them away!! mind you the aircon valve in a discovery is even worse to do. I changed a heater rad in a big Citroen once, when dismantled you would swear someone had dropped a hand grenade in the car. Renault 11, I cut the bulkhead away rather than take the dashboard out, even allowing for the cutting and refixing it was hours quicker. Vauxhall Carlton it is quickest to cut the passenger end of the heater and slide the matrix out the wrong way.

If it's a manual Vauxhall Carlton it's easier to just fully depress the clutch, which gives enough room to slide it out. Easy to do, though I had trouble properly bolting in that little plate to make a seal, so just ended up chopping one of the pipes and bypassing the matrix.

Same for a Mazda MX-5: about 3 hours if you really know what you're doing, 6 if you haven't done it before.

Rumour has it that on a certain Rolls-Royce model it takes an experienced RR mechanic 48 hours' labour.

Years ago the answer to that would have been "that is impossible sir, as RR heaters do not fail"

mrcheerful

experienced

AFAIK the only easy heater is the bolt-on accessory type as fitted to a Ford Pop I once owned ( in those days heaters were optional )

...speaks from bitter experience of Volvo 740...and it still doesn't get hot, merely lukewarm...grrrr

Cortina mk 3 and 4/5 were really easy, straight out from under the bonnet, two screws, 2 hoses, ten minute job all in.

Volvo 740 should burn your legs off, IIRC there is an angled connector onto the inlet manifold that gets furred up, so you get reduced flow, have a look at that (assuming I am thinking of the right car/variation)

mrcheerful

The message from "Steptoe" contains these words:

LandRovers were the same in the early days.

After 9 or 10 winters of wearing coats in the car, I am grateful for any suggestions. On inspection, the angled connector feeds the autochoke (

*thinks* I changed this out for a manual version because it wasn't working...doh ) but will check the heater hose unions, after 230K miles a little furring up is quite likely....

Dug this post out of the back of the box as on Monday ( nice warm day with promise of cold ones to come ) I took all the heater hoses off, easy job in that nice big engine bay. The problem was the vacuum operated heater valve; the 'open' position was almost closed plus the flap was crudded up. The heater is now better than it has been for the last ten years, thanks for the tips.