My [old] van has started leaking a bit from the heater matrix above the passenger footwell and I have two questions:

1) Is it OK to continue driving as long as the coolant is kept topped up?

2) anybody experienced replacing the heater matri on one of these?

yes though you may get an air lock depending on the design – cold air and no leak will be a good sign of this
never done on that van but always an inaccesiblke pain in the rear try some rad weld or K force [ is that the right stuff?] or equivalent which MAY fix the leak before you have all the trouble of fixing it

Probably fine to drive for a while but not ideal and could cause further expensive pain. Two options, fix it – likely to be less difficult with a van than a car, but still no fun, or bypass it in the engine bay until you can fix it (identify the two hoses that go through the bulkhead and remove them, make a u bend out of old copper pipe and secure the hoses to it well). No heater but at least no further damage and you can put it off until you can afford time to fix.

OK, thanks guys. It rarely gets used nowadays and have just forked out to have the immobiliser by-passed as it had a fit and wouldn't recognise any keys 👿

Might just go with the bypassing trick for now.

which will be fine in summer but not great for winter good idea though for easy fix.

would there be an issue with giving Barr Leaks as go and see what that does? I'm not expecting to keep the van for much longer anyway.

personally I would try any old sh1te to fix it if only a small leak you have a chance of fixing it do before bypassing and when the coolant is warm iirc
IMHO this is better
http://www.proppa.com/k-seal-cooling-system-repair-98-p.asp

about a tenner iirc fixed my leaking head casket when I last used it

Cheers Junkyard……. just ordered some K-Seal. Hopefully will do the trick. 🙂

Not sure how you'd go about this, but I would have a go at just treating the heater matrix from the bulkhead rather than gumming up the whole engine. Run water through the matrix with a hosepipe whilst regularly adding the treatment?

I replaced the heater matrix in my old Citroen ZX, had to take the whole dashboard off including steering wheel, centre consoles, hot air ducts and motor, it was scary sitting in the car just looking at the firewall with the loom just draped over it 🙂 If you do replace it, try getting one from a scrapper. You get to make all the mistakes breaking clips and trim on the donor car and removing bits that you didn't need to. I struck gold and my car of choice had nearly new matrix in it (still shiny) and I took the whole dashboard as mine was damaged, the guy stood there looking at dash, matrix and assorted other goodies and just plain forgot to charge me for the matrix, even though he knew that was what I wanted 🙂

spooky_b329 – Member

replaced the heater matrix in my old Citroen ZX, had to take the whole dashboard off including steering wheel, centre consoles, hot air ducts and motor, it was scary sitting in the car just looking at the firewall with the loom just draped over it If you do replace it, try getting one from a scrapper. You get to make all the mistakes breaking clips and trim on the donor car and removing bits that you didn't need to.

Did the same thing replacing it on a 306 D Turbo a few years ago, never again to be honest.

As for the orginal post, there should be a valve you can turn to turn off the flow to the heater matrix, as the pipe feeding it forks off into the matrix before coming back around into the engine. It should be right at the back of the engine bay, infront of the bulk head. However it does mean it will be rather cold in the winter! But it will get it fixed for now.

Good luck either way!

As a mechanically sympathetic person I cringe at the thought of using goo to fix car coolant circuits, but it has been known to work so I guess it just depends whether you're up for possibly causing problems but a very easy "fix", or whether yuo want to do the job properly. Only you can make that call.

I thought the 'valve' was normally a bleed screw to expel air…it is ok my current vehicles anyway. If the van has the XUD engine then be careful to bleed it carefully, the radiator cap is not the highest point in the engine so you need to extend it with a bottle and bleed properly otherwise you will be left with an airlock and the headgasket will blow.