Morat

Hello, I've broken it again
I drove into work today through the mist and thought "woah, I'm throwing up some spray" then I started to smell coolant... I was doing an impression of a dying Messerschmitt with a big cloud behind me.

Anyway, I looked in the front and saw this



The hose itself looks OK but the bracket that it clamps to has sheered at the T piece. I need to find a new one (and it looks an easy fix) but does it have a name or part number?
thanks!
Morat

Slick761

What year jeep.. give me the specs... and whatcha got goin over to the right? Looks interesting. Think you're talking about the heater control valve.......

Morat

Sorry, should know by now!

It's a 96 4.0 LTD in right hand drive. The yellow part is the siren for a Toad alarm unit.

Thanks for your help....

Slick761

Yes I do believe you need a heater control valve... I don't know where you live but rockauto.com has it for 30$

Morat

Thank you! A friend of mine has connected the pipes straight through so I can get home and I'll get a new part asap. I doubt rockauto ship to the UK but I'll give it a go. Thanks again.

edit: they DO ship to me - but it does cost more than the part. Heh, gotta expect that I suppose. I'll see if there's one locally first but thanks for the tip off.

Cherokee89

Morat, check out your local scrappy and look for a Volvo 850 Turbo or an 960 Turbo, they may have the heater conntrol valve you need.

Slick761

Some people like to bypass it. Myself I like keeping things working the way they were designed.

BigBear

I would not buy a new heater control valve, just buy a new hose clamp and your done. It cost like 1-2 bucks, unless you see the heater control valve is cracked then buy a new one but other than that you just need a new clamp at any autoparts store.

stroked

Looks like you could use a coolant flush too. Looks kinda muddy.

Morat

Thanks for your help everyone. I got the part eventually for $22 (genuine) from Here and 5l of Fuchs Eskimo coolant from opie oils in the UK. BigBear, when I got the old part off it had obviously been cooked at some point and the plastic was brittle and crumbling so I had to get a new one.

The existing coolant was definitely muddy so I took stroked's advice and flushed it gently with a garden hose - pretty easy since with the bottom radiator hose off and the heater control valve out I could flush the block and the matrix separately until they ran clear. Just look out for the water coming out of the matrix hose and splashing all over the distributor - probably not a great idea.

I probably should have done the rad too - but it is only about a thousand miles old and light was fading.

A set of mole grips helped a huge amount with the hose clamps for the heater valve and once I'd figured out I'd have to remove the air filter/intake* to get my ham fists in and put the lower rad hose back on everything was peachy. The coolant pretty much filled the system back up and I topped off with some more water through the radiator cap then bled it by running the engine with the rad cap off and keeping the header tank up to the mark with water. When the levels had stabilised I put the rad cap back on and let it get to working temp. I checked I was getting hot air from the heaters, the fans kicked in on cue and then I shut her down. There was a big belch in the header tank and that was it.

I know none of this will be news to the people who helped me in this thread but in case any other clueless noob like me finds this on a search they'll know exactly what to do!

*apart from the obvious, there's 3 nuts/bolts under the air filter that hold the lower half of the intake box to the chassis

Slick761

Nice! Feels good eh? I love projects. Feels great when I've finished on my jeep. Even things I've done 100 times to customer cars.... so satisfying to get stuff done on the good ol Cherokee