505 Series 2 Climate Control - no heat

Tom_95

Member
Fellow Frogger
Joined
Jul 4, 2011
Messages
293
Location
Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Hi all,I've recently bought an '88 505 GTD with plans to use it as a daily. There's a few little bits and pieces that I'd like to get sorted before I do so; namely getting the heater to work.The fan, and air directional buttons all work OK, but no matter what the temperature slider is set on the air output is still stone cold. I've done a bit of reading up on the issue and from what I can gather it's likely to be either dodgy contacts inside the temperature slider, or a stuck heater tap.I managed to fire a fair amount of contact cleaner into the front of the temp slider and from what I can see everything in there looks nice and clean. This leads me to believe that the tap might be the issue? From what I've read it lives on the inside of one of the wheel wells, but I for the life of me can't find it.Does anyone have any suggestions from where to go from here?
 
heater

hi
there are some vacuum pipes that operating the ducts check them too
i will be interested to know how u fixed it up as the heater in my wagon does not work.
cheers ron
 
Am I correct in thinking that the vacuum ducting is only for directing flow though? All of that seems to work OK.As for the solenoid, I had a good poke around and still for the life of me can't find it. I can see (what looks like) 2 heater hoses that go through the firewall just near the steering column but that's about it.
 
It's not a heater tap like on a 504 or series 1 505, Tom. I don't really understand it but I'm sure someone will be along shortly to explain it...
 
Generally the best way is to fit a manual under the bonnet switch on the water line that you turn off in summer. As Robbo says it is located below the brake booster. The cables that operate it are usually suspect so you can simply disconnect those and switch it by hand.
But first you'll need to dismantle it and have a look to see if it's all gummed up.
The other thing that goes wrong is the fan system fails. Does your fan blow properly on cold? Most cars with heaters have had the heater edectomy, which involves breaking all the original foam away on the firewall , removing the heater fan unit and replacing with one that works. It's a bastard of a job .
Then the other problem is the actual heater radiator gets all gummed up like the switch. Getting that out requires that you grovel on your back with your head down in the footwell while looking up under the dash with a serious torch, so you can disconnect the two heater hoses and eventually pull that unit out so it can be sent to the radiator guys to open, clean and reseal and then that unit should be a good thing. Then of course there's the trip to the chiropractor to undo wot the gearbox tunnel did to yer neck. As long as you make sure you put it back with some nice heater hoses that aren't going to bust and spray hot water on yer feet some time when you are minding yer own business on a nice dark freeway thousands of miles from home and now yer stranded.
Otherwise heaters are pretty easy to fix. Another method is to make sure the water pipe switch is clear and then run some radiator cleaner through the system and be particularly anal about following all recommended procedures. This _can_ side step the other more invasive techniques.
 
A little update - I've decided to attack the solenoid tap first, rather than anything that requires the removal of the undoubtedly-fragile interior plastics.

Does anyone have any tips of how to actually get at the little b*****d? Contrary to what I thought, it's actually buried on the passenger's side of the firewall below the fuel filter.
 
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