On my car’s last outing back in October, I noticed that the misses, the good lady Christine, was experiencing far warmer legs than I was. While she was quite happy with this state of affairs, I felt that I was maybe suffering unnecessarily, so I thought some investigative work was required.
So, a couple of weeks ago I drained all the coolant, and then to give the heater matrix a good flush, I took off both the heater hoses and then connected the garden hose to one of the heater pipes. To the other heater pipe, I connected a length of old garden hose so that it discharged into a bucket. I then turned on the tap and let mains water pressure do the rest. After a few seconds of gurgling and spluttering, several chunks of congealed Radweld (or similar stuff) appeared in the bucket. Success!
(The previous owner had a new radiator fitted at some stage, so I assume that he’d put some stuff in the system prior to that to try and cure a leak, but it would appear that the system hadn’t been flushed through sufficiently when the new rad was fitted).
I then reversed the hose connections so that the heater matrix had a good flush through both ways.
I then re-filled the system and ran the car for several minutes to make sure everything was leak-free.
But to make sure that the heater was working properly, the car needed a good run – so the other Sunday, and even though the temperature was hovering around the zero degree mark and the roads were wet and salty (but the sun was shining!), I had to go for a little spin. So on with the woolly hat, scarf, thermals and gloves and off we set – thankfully with nice warm legs.
With the heater now in full working order, the Simmonds Windstop performing well, and the ski-hat pulled firmly on, I had a nice warm, snug little trip.
Even though I had to thoroughly wash the Morgan down afterwards, the 40-mile jaunt was well worth it, and I’m very grateful to the previous owner who chose the full ‘rustproofing’ option!
