Alright, with all the talk about people doing away with the heater valve and running their hoses hot rod style I'm itching to do it too. Esp. to get all that crap off the top of the valve cover. But I don't want hot feet during the summer so.... has anyone considered using one of these? (a manual shutoff valve) what kinda effect would it have. I mean would having the flow blocked off in the summer without a bypass kill the water pump? Am I just setting myself up for some hoses to blow off? Any ideas are appreiciated.

 

Alright, it can't be THAT difficult... Surely someone has used one of these before. I mean you can get the damn things at Advance for Pete's sake!

 

It would work fine, lots of older cars used to use a cable-controlled valve like that... although, what a PITA, with that multi-turn handle... you can get one of those 1/4 turn globe valves at a hardware store, it would be a whole lot easier to use

 

You do not want to shut off flow through the heater core unless you RE-ROUTE it back to the radiator.

See, the coolant needs to flow while the t-stat is closed for even heating of the coolant. This is normaly done through the heater core and back to the top of the water pump or the port on the radiator below the fill cap (late style).

You would need a 3-way walve to keep the coolant circulating while by-passing the heater core in the summer. Just like the factory dirverter.

 

Ive re-routed my heater hoses and have had no problem with any interior heat and it gets hot here.

 

Well, I did it today and let me tell you, that hard line that runs along the frame is a PITA to get out. A Dremel took care of that, but a reciprocating saw would have saved me a lot of cutting disks. My coolant is always circulating a little, thanks to an old hot rod trick of drilling a small hole in the thermostat and I left the valve cracked just a little so junk won't build up in the heater core. So far there are no leaks and I must say it will make spark plugs, wires, headers, and such much easier to install on any thidgen. I didn't use the ball valve suggested earlier for 3 reasons -A. I don't know how it would handle the heat, they can handle the 130 degrees of a typical hot water line in your home but I dunno about the 220 degrees that it reaches before the fan cuts in. -B. I wanted to be able to control the flow, not just off and on. -C. Even if I turned it completely off in April and completely on in October that's only twice a year that I have to turn the thing all 10 complete rotations (I counted ). I give this nearly free mod (about $16 for the valve and heater hose) an A+.

 

Or you could go the EASY way and run the heater hose from the front of your intake DIRECTLY to the radiator. Makes for a much more cleaner and almost invisible installation.

When winter comes, I take this hose and disconnect it form the rad and connect it to the heater core. Then I take the hose that runs along the framerail and connect it to the radiator. Wow... how simple!

 

Ah, finally some good info about this. When I did my bypass I was all ready to install a 90 degree fitting into the intake and the 1/4 turn valve parallel with the valve covers. Only I didn't know at the time if the thermostat I had in would provide enough of a bypass to prevent hot spots from forming. Turns out that it does and now I'm thinking that with the stewarts stage 2 pump is flowing too much bypass through the heatercore that the car is getting too warm for comfort. Never redline, just well up to 220 and that's the max so far. I'm going to go ahead and install the shutoff valve on the supply line from the intake to the heatercore. If it fails you'll find out from me first .
I just hope the thermo has enough bypass.