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[Smoothie]

A few weeks ago my order from thepartsbin arrived and we had a nice warm 45 F day, so I climbed onto my engine to replace the heater valve. The heater was always lacking since I got the car and this year it stopped heating all together. I drained the coolant, removed the coil and distributor cap to get access and eventually got the old valve out. Checked it out and found it was ok - the lever moved and the valve opened and closed as it should. What the... There was some residue - a muddy substance within the valve and more in the heater hose that leads through the firewall from the heater. Obviously something's clogged and it needs to be flushed out. Since I had the car warmed up, it would be best to use hot water, so I ran a garden hose into the house and attached to the water heater, then assembled some fittings and a small piece of small pipe that could be clamped into the heater hose. Attached and clamped the garden hose assembly into the piece of heater hose that attaches to the front of the heater valve and turned on the water...nothing. Turned the water off and poked a hanger wire into the other section of heater hose. It came out coated with the muddy stuff. I turned the water back on...nothing. Left it on and went over to the other side of the engine to fiddle around and touched something that moved that piece of heater hose and it suddenly broke loose - muddy water, coolant, hot water now shooting all over the place. Success! I shut off the water and climbed back onto the engine to reattach the heater valve. (I reused the old one because it was alright and the one thepartsbin sent wasn't quite right - it was for an older model and had a shorter lever arm. It would work, but the shorter lever would limit the travel of the control lever of the climate control inside the car.) Anyway, as I was positioned to deal with that, I looked down and saw three perfectly formed Canadian Goose turd looking sections of the previously mentioned mud laying across the top of the crank sensor and window to the flywheel. I carefully picked up and tossed the well formed doodies onto the driveway in front of the car (where they were forgotten about until the nextdoor neighbor stopped by and wound up stepping in one). Apparently, the anatomy of the heater hose matches that of a Canada Goose and the previous owner had introduced some kind of radiator stop-leak substance into the cooling system. It took over 10 years, but it all eventually accumulated and plugged up that hose between the heater and the valve. Nice, but it's good to have heat again.

That little adventure led to another as some of the water splashing around the engine made its' way into the starter solenoid and gunked it up. After a couple weeks having to warm the starter with a heat gun on very cold mornings to get it going, we had another warm-enough day, so I took out the starter and disassembled and cleaned the solenoid. The fun never ends. Now onto why it's loosing power at 3000 rpm...


note for anyone needing to deal with the heater valve: I found a large pair of forceps very useful for reattaching the cable clip to the heater valve in the limited space. I got mine quite a few years ago from Cabela's - they sold them for use as fish hook retrievers.
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"..it's made in Germany. You know the Germans always make good stuff."


'82 924T, US version, dark green metallic, 5 speed Audi 016G gearbox

[speedsta2003]

[Carnut 280]

we have our forceps as dad once sold them, and had a few left over. NO THERE AREN'T ANY LEFT! DON'T ASK!
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Porschephile at home=Carnut 280

[Lizard]

when I read your post I thought you were going to say and because of the water pressure the entire heater core exploded inside the car making a HUGE mess, but instead it just pooped eh, oh well your no fun
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3 928s,