Found a few drops of anti-freeze on the passenger side floor today, so obviously the heater core is on its way out. However, I am not ready to replace it and don't need the heater for now. My question, does anyone know the diameter of the hoses so I can get inserts to create a bypass loop?
Thanks folks

 

When that happened to me many years ago and I was stuck on the side of the road in my Chevelle and I just cut the hoses and jammed two sticks in the hoses and wound up leaving it like that for a couple years.

Not sexy but it worked.

You could cut off a foot or so and loop it back onto itself at the water pump.

 

Thanks, probably go to Autozone tomorrow and see what they have.

 

I do not recall the tube diameter, but, you could use some of the existing tubing and cut the rest off at the firewall. Save yourself a trip to autozone.

 

I believe its 5/8". bypassing the core and connecting the two hoses is a good temporary solution, with long term problems. Bypassing allows hot eng coolant to route directly back into the motor, bypassing the radiator. You'll eventually overheat, or wonder why your motor is running hotter then usual. Block off the water pump hoses when you have the opportunity and remove the bypass.

 

Didn't think that the heater core dissipated that much heat with the fluid only travelling an extra few feet through the firewall. But will take that into consideration, tks.

 

Agreed. There is no air running across the heater core. How much "heat gain" could you expect? Negligible at best.

 

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some engines most certainly run hotter without a heater core, however. if it does run hotter without the core, you have other probs you need to look at like insufficient timing, partially plugged rad, no rad shroud, bad clutch fan, rad too small for application because the engine has high compression and/or thin cylinder walls.

just because there is no air flowing over the heater core unless you turn the fan on has nothing to do with the fact that you are reducing the amount of water in the marginal stock system.

 

Just replace the core and be done with it. The core is what, only $35. and replacement is not hard or very time consuming. Probably almost as cheap and time consuming as monkeying around with hoses. We replaced one in our 67 and then tried to replace one in an 88 Firebird which took a major disassembly job of the whole dash area.
Just do it