Heating and Cooling - Heater Box Removal

The next thing to do is to remove the heater core. Generally, this tends to be a big pain. You see, removing the heater core involves crawling under the dashboard, usually half upside-down, with very littler room to maneuver, while unfastening nuts and bolts in very tight and hard to reach places. Being a contortionist is not a requirement, but it is very helpful.

On the GTV, the center console must be removed before reaching the heater core. Although this is not difficult, it adds to the amount of work needed to be done. The console contains switches for actuating the wipers, heater fan, and fog lights, as well as a cigarrette lighter. These have wiring that must be disconnected and labeled, making things a bit slower.

Plus, the shift lever sticks right through the middle of the console. Again, adding to the amount of work required.

So, to start, one removes the shifter knob. On this car, the knob is a simple slip-on knob. One then removes a few screws holding the center console in place. This allows the console to be moved around, providing access to the wiring underneath the console itself.

During this whole process, I jiggled the cigarrette lighter and the various switches, just to figure out how to proceed. To my surprise, smoke starting coming out from around the lighter wiring. Holy cow! I pretty much panicked - images of the car burning down my house flashed through my mind. After fumbling for the hood lever, finally finding it and popping the hood, then looking for an unfindable 10mm wrench (is that the right size for the battery terminals?), and realizing this was taking way too much time, I figured I'd try to disconnect the wiring from the lighter itself. With the heating element glowing red, I reached in (half expecting to burn my fingers,) found the wires, and disconnected the lighter plug. Smoke streamed for a few more seconds ("what else is burning?") but then it faded and stopped altogether.

Moral of the story: always disconnect the battery when working with the car!

So, I proceeded to disconnect the battery terminal, and caught my breath. Talk about dodging a potential bullet. This is a lesson that I keep forgetting, and keeps biting me in the butt!

I then detached the wiper, heater, and fog lamp switches from the console. This allowed me to keep everything connected (and functional) while freeing up the center console itself. I also removed the heater temperature control levers and cover plates, and pulled the console out of the way.

At this point, the shift lever sits by itself, covered by two rubber boot. One of the rubber boots is supposed to cover the transmission tunnel, while the other one rests above it. In my car, they were flipped - the lower boot sat on top of the top boot! Removing the boots just involves pulling them out of the shift lever.

On closer inspection, both boots were torn. The bottom one (which should have been on top) was covered in tranny fluid (which explains some of the odors inside the car.) These things will need to be thrown out and replaced.

Once all this is removed, one can tackle the heater box itself.

One starts by removing the two air ducts connecting the heater box to the defrost vents. Each air duct is attached to the heater box by two nuts. Removing them was trivial. So far, so good.














The next thing is to disconnect the heater box from the electrical wiring. Not a big deal, but it requires labeling the wires to make sure we can connect them correctly again.

Next, one disconnects the coolant hoses from the heater box itself. I had already bypassed them, so they were mostly empty, but a bit of coolant dripped from them, nonetheless. These will be replaced with fresh hoses when putting everything back together again.



Next, one needs to unfasten the four nuts that hold the heater box in place. These nuts fasten around four studs connected to the top inside of the dashboard. Needless to say, these things are buried deep within wiring, ducts, and other parts under the dash.

To gain better access, I found it useful to remove the heater valve. After removing the heater valve, access to the two studs on the driver side was tricky, but with some patience, the nuts came out OK.

The two studs on the passenger side were a bit more accessible, but still, unfastening them was slow, patient work.


Once the mounting nuts are removed, the box can be jiggled out of place. However, there is barely enough clearance to pull the box out from under the dashboard. I eventually removed the bottom part of the heater box (the actual heater fan, as it turned out.) This allowed me to remove the box in pieces. This worked OK for now, but in all honesty, I am not sure how I'll put this all together back in place.

Overall, the box looks old and a bit rusty, but very rebuildable. The plastic parts need a good cleaning, but there is no apparent damage to it. The flapper doors (which route air to the floor, or up to the defroster vents) are rusty, but the rubber edge trim on them feels flexible and without any cracks or damage. The box needs cleanup and maybe some paint, but overall, it looks in very good shape.

Another surprise, however: the fan is actually a six-bladed fan. For my model year, the fan should have been a cylindrical "squirrel box" fan. I am not sure how the wrong fan type got in there, or to which car it belongs. It looks like a fan from an older vintage GTV, but I do not know for sure.

After all this, I bagged and labeled all the parts, and put everything away. The car is still driveable, although the transmission boots are missing, allowing noise and air to come through the transmission tunnel.

Next up: Things to buy, parts to repair.

Heating and Cooling - Heater Bypass

So, first, I figured I'd bypass the heater system in order to keep the car running without having coolant sprayed all over my feet. This buys me time to then remove the heater system, restore it, and replace it at a nice, leisurely pace.














First, I got a 10-foot length of heater hose from International Auto Parts. At $2.95 per foot plus shipping/handling, this can be a bit of a pricey option, but I figured I'd get something that works with the car. The ID is 13mm, so looking back, I figure I could source this locally and save on shipping.

The heater core is bypassed by disconnecting it at two places:
1. At the top of the engine, towards the back
2. At the water pump.















In order to avoid spills, I emptied the coolant from the engine. Raise the car high enough to fit a clean 5-gallon paint bucket under the radiator drain spout, open the drain spout, and wait. To hurry things, open the radiator cap.

Once the engine is mostly empty, close the drain spout, then open the two bleeder screws - one on the water pump, the other at the top of the engine (near the thermostat.)

Then, disconnect the coolant hoses at the two spots - at the top/rear of the engine, and at the water pump. Then connect these two places directly with 3" length of coolant hose. Make sure to route the hose away from any moving parts. Since hot coolant will flow through this hose, make sure to keep it away from anything that does not like heat.

Tighten all the various hose clamps, and refill the cooling system. As you refill the cooling system, keep the air bleed screws open until coolant starts seeping out, then replace and tighten.

That's it - it is really that simple.

Test driving the car verified that the coolant ceased to leak inside the car. Good thing. The flip side is that the car gets awfully cold at night, and with winter approaching, this becomes a major issue. But I suspect the car will be parked for most of the winter anyways, and so I will not worry too much about this yet.

Next up: removing the heater core; a few surprises.

Heating and Cooling - Intro

Heating and cooling - part 1.

So, during one of my drives around town, I noticed a bit of water around my driving foot. Not to worry - it was raining, and I thought it was probably a minor rain-related leak. Upon further inspection when I got home, I realized this was not plain water, but actual engine coolant.

Engine coolant leaks inside the car are usually not a good thing.

You see, heater systems inside most cars work by circulating hot engine coolant inside a small radiator (a.k.a. heater core) inside the car itself. A fan blows air through it (heating the air), and then to the rest of the car. For the most part, this is a fairly straightforward thing to do, but after many years, heater cores will corrode and spring leaks. On occasion, the valve controlling the flow of hot coolant onto the core will also fail, also springing leaks. Plus, you have all these rubber hoses getting coolant to and from the heater core, and these tend to fail over time.

To address this, the only thing to do is to remove any leaky parts and replace and/or rebuild them.

The two most common failure points on GTVs such as mine are the heater core itself and the heater valve. The heater valve can be sourced fairly easily at Centerline and/or International Auto Parts. It costs about $40-$50, and replacing it is straightforward.

Dealing with the heater core is a bit more involved. First, removing it from the car involves removing the complete case around the heater core itself (which contains the blower fan and other related parts.) Once this is done, rebuilding the core requires specialized expertise, and about $150-$200 worth of repairs. Then there's the matter of putting it all together and making sure it all works.

Sigh...

On the plus side, now I know what Alfa my winter project would be.

I figured I'd address this problem in two parts:
1. bypass the heater system. This is very straight forward - one bypasses the heater system from the cooling circuit. This allows me to drive the car, but alas, the heater becomes useless.

2. repair the heater system itself. Basically, disassemble the whole thing, figure out what's broken and repair it. While at it, I will replace the associated rubber hoses and any wiring that seems worn or about to fail.

Over the next few posts, I'll describe my adventures doing this. I suspect this will take a few months, as the holidays are here and my free time will be somewhat limited. But if you are curious about this kind of work, here is an excellent Alfa BB thread explaining this whole repair:

http://www.alfabb.com/bb/forums/car-restoration/3922-heater-box-rebuild.html


Next: Heating and cooling - bypassing the heater.

Water Works, Part 1

So, I've been out of town a lot over the past six weeks - Thanksgiving, Mexico, and the Xmas Holidays. But I finally got back home a week ago, and decided it was time to work again on the Alfa.

Last time I posted, I had found a water/coolant leak in the car, and decided that I had to either replace the water pump, or maybe just tighten it a bit more. Going over the Previous Owner's receipts, I did not find any evidence of the water pump being replaced when the engine got rebuilt. So, I figured, I might as well pony up $85 and buy a new water pump from Centerline. The thing is back ordered, however, and it will be a week or two more before I get it.

So, I figured, I might as well do a bit of prep work and remove the old pump.

Now, this sounds easier than it is. See, to get to the water pump, you need to remove the engine fan. To get to the engine fan, you need to remove the radiator. And so on -- you get the idea. So, at about 9:30am on Sunday, I marched to the garage, cleaned up a bit, and got to work.

First, I raised the car onto jack stands. This provided a bit of extra access to the front of the engine from the bottom of the car, and allowed me remove the oil sump pan guard grill. See, the bottom of the oil sump rides fairly low on this car, and in order to protect it, the car comes equipped with a metal undertray.















Another part needing a bit of cleanup...

I then flushed the radiator. This is done by reaching under the radiator with a 12mm wrench, and unbolting the drain plug found underneath. Of course, once the plug is gone gravity took over, and a bit of coolant got sprayed all over the garage floor. To my surprise, the fluid came out yellow (as opposed to very tasty/shiny green.) But it came clear enough, with no oil or anything. This is a very encouraging thing.

I ended up draining about 2+ gallons from the engine! For a small motor, there's tons of coolant in there.


Then I removed the front grill of the car. This allows even more access to the water pump assembly from the front of the car without having to remove the hood. This also allows me to really clean up the grill, and make it really shiny and all.


Next, I had to remove the radiator. It quickly became evident that it might be easier to access the various fasteners and hoses attached to the radiator by first removing the car's battery. So, I figured, what's another part? So, I unplugged the wires connecting to the battery, and removed the battery.

This is when I encountered my not-so-good surprise - the plastic tray holding the battery was covered in some sort of gooey slime. Some of it had migrated to the metal tray holding this whole thing in the engine compartment. This is worrysome, as a) gooey stuff coming from batteries tends to be very acidic, b) acidic stuff eats through metal, and c) Alfas tend to have very rust-prone metal to begin with.

Hmmmm....
So, I put on fresh gloves over my dirty gloves, grabbed a rag, and cleaned up as much as I could of the metal tray. I'll have to pour some Baking Soda on the metal tray, too, in order to neutralize the acidity, then rinse the whole thing. For now, though, most of the acid was out of the way. Fortunately, the paint on the tray did not seem to be damaged at all. Good thing there...

I then added to the list of things to do: buy a new battery...

I then moved on to the radiator (finally.) Removal was pretty straight forward: remove two nuts from the top, untie three hoses, then pull the thing straight up. The thing looked a bit dirty, but otherwise in good shape.

Then on to the engine fan. To remove it, you undo five small bolts (10mm?) on the face of the fan itself. Removing the front grill allowed excellent access to the fan itself. Then I loosened up the alternator (19mm wrench, 17mm socket for the main pivot bolt) for added clearance, and removed the fan belt.

By now, I was feeling all confident and happy. I did take my time (about two hours), but I had encountered no show stoppers so far. So I figured, time to remove the water pump.


The water pump is a very annoying thing. To remove it, you need to disconnect three hoses from the pump housing. Upon removing each, a few ounces (maybe a pint) of coolant would start pouring all over the place. Again, this tends to splatter all over the floor, making a mess, and breaking things. Once the hoses are undone, however, it got worse.

There are nine studs sticking out of the timing belt cover that hold the water pump in place. I needed to remove the 10mm nuts fastened to each stud. Although access was a bit tricky, removing the nuts took all of five minutes. However, as I pulled the pump out, the thing did not clear the crank pulley right underneath the pump itself. As it turned out, the two lower studs prevent you from clearing the pump out of the way. I recalled reading about this on the AlfaBB, but I did not understand what folks had referred to. (See picture towards the end, after removing the pump. The bottom two studs are the annoying ones!)

Until now, that is. How freaking annoying! Who comes up with this!?

After perusing the online BBs for about an hour, I found I had two options:
a) remove the studs
b) remove the crank pulley.

To remove a stud, the typical process calls for threading two nuts onto the stud itself, tightening them against each other, then turning the **bottom* nut counterclockwise, with the hope that the now-very-tight nuts will, in turn, rotate the stud out from the timing belt cover. This assumes that there is enough thread on the stud to place the two nuts, and enough room to get two hands to work two wrenches simultaneously.

After trying for about 45 minutes, I realized I could do neither effectively.

How freaking annoying!!

So, time for option B - attack the crank pulley. For this, one needs to source a 38mm socket (some GTV models use a 36mm socket - not mine, though) in order to remove the gigantic nut holding the pulley to the crank. I found one such socket at the local Shucks store for $19. I guess that's one more thing I don't need to buy anymore.

There are two main challenges when removing the nut that holds the crank pulley:
a) As you apply torque to the nut, the engine rotates. After all, you are applying torque to a nut that is tied to the crank itself. And guess what, the crank is supposed to rotate, right?
b) The nut itself is tightened with a lot of torque - 180ft-lbs is the spec. That's a lot of torque!

The trick to solving (B) is easy: grab the biggest breaker bar you can find, and pull on it as hard as you dare. Or even better, buy some air tools and go at it with an impact wrench. I do not have air tools nor impact wrenches, so I had to settle for the breaker bar option.

The trick to solving (A), however, is to shift the transmission into 5th gear, and applying the hand brake. This effectively prevents the engine from turning, as the crank is connected directly to the wheels through the now-engaged transmission. So, I tried that first, and as I pulled on the breaker bar, I came to the realization the parking brake did not work, and the car rolled backwards about six inches.

How freaking annoying!! Another thing I have to fix!

So I chocked the rear wheels with a few 2x6s I had lying around, and tried again. This time around, the car did not move much. At first, the nut did not budge. So, I pulled as hard as I could, and just when I started to think "I must be about to break something", the thing started to give way. A few more tugs, and the nut came loose.

Wee!!!

Once the nut came loose, I tugged on the crank pulley a few times. At first, the thing did not budge. However, a few hard tugs later, the thing came loose. I got lucky - some folks require a bit more light tapping and the such.

Double-wee!!!

I then tugged on the water pump, and the thing came out easily.

Triple-wee!!!

By now, it was 5:30pm. I figured it was time to clean up the garage a bit, gather/organize all the parts I disassembled, and call it a night. I did accomplish the goal for the day. But man, I sure felt I'd be sore the next morning.

So, the car is still dead, with no battery, no water pump, and a few parts removed. I suspect getting all this stuff together again will not take as long, once all the parts are cleaned up and ready to go.

Kinks in the plan

So, a few weeks ago, I decided to park the car and pretty much put all my suspension work on hold until the new year. I figured I would not have much time before then, with all the holiday season ongoings and all.

However, I did decide to replace the ignition cables. The old ones were cracked and weird looking. So, I went ahead and replaced them. Really simple stuff, although figuring out how to route them through the engine compartment took me a while - I wanted to get them just right!

Afterwards, I turned on the engine, and let the car warm up for about five minutes. Everything idled well, so I shut down the car, and went to bed.

A couple of days later, I was doing laundry in the garage, and I noticed a puddle of water on the floor. My first though was that the garage roof had sprung a leak. After looking around for a few minutes, it hit me - this could be coming from the car.

Sure enough, it was engine coolant. D'oh!

So, I looked around the engine compartment for a bit, and I figured it seems like there is an issue with the water pump. I also noticed the car was missing the swivel nut on the alternator bracket that is used to adjust the belt tension. Very weird. So, the belt was loose, and the pump (or something in the vicinity) was leaking...

I've also noticed that many bolts tend to be a bit loose - I can easily add torque to many of them. Which leads me to think two things:
a) The water pump is bad
b) the water pump was not torqued correctly, and water/coolant is leaking through the seams.

How annoying!

Since then, I've been buying bolts to replace the missing ones, and have been doing a bit of research on how to proceed. The most mentioned course involves removing the radiator, fan, and pump, in order to ensure the pump is A-OK. I suspect I might buy a replacement pump anyways. I am also considering getting an electric fan, since all parts will be disassembled and all.

And all these repairs will have to wait until after the new year...

And theeeen, I can work on the suspension...
Or on whatever breaks next...