Metalhorse
07-22-2011, 03:56 AM
My 1996 right-hand drive 318ti had an engine swap in Feb this year. Prior to that both the air con and heater worked just fine. After the engine was swapped, neither worked.
I've finally got around to tracking the issues down. I'm starting with the heating issue because I'm in outer west Sydney, Australia (at the foot of the Blue Mountains) and its pretty damn cold here atm.
Keep in mind I'm an amateur, and had no clue what I was looking at to start off with. But I REALLY wanted to research and do all the hands on stuff with this car myself. I love working on cars, but my husband is more knowledgable that I am and always ends up taking the lead. This time, I wanted to trouble-shoot and repair it all myself.
With some difficulty, I located the water heater valve... it was not mounted to the firewall and just hanging there, but the electrical connector was hooked up and so were the two hoses (at the time I didn't realise that the hoses were plumbed straight back into the engine instead of going through the firewall and to the heater box).
So:
I tried bleeding the cooling system
I took my stereo head deck and glovebox out looking for the bowden cable attachment to the heater box (and then realised that of course the instructions I was reading were for a left-hand drive 318ti)
I removed the panel under the steering wheel in the right-hand footwell and checked that the bowden cable was moving the flap in the heater box. It works perfectly
I listened for the 'clicking' (or rather, 'clunking') of the heater valve solenoid as my husband moved the temp dial from full cold to cool (at first we had tried moving the temp dial from full hot to warm, but then read somewhere on here that the solenoid energizes on FULL COLD which was a bit anti-intuitive)
By this time I was frustrated because, while it was great everything was functioning properly, I still hadn't found the problem. I started packing up for the night and while I was reconnecting the electrical plug to the water heater valve, my husband pointed out that there were two holes in the firewall just behind the valve that weren't connected to anything. So I did some reading and sure enough, the hoses from my heater valve were supposed to connect up through the firewall to the heater box, but the mechanics who had swapped the engine into the car obviously decided that hooking the heating system up properly was too hard!
So now I get to the point...
I'm having trouble finding out what the yellow plastic part with the heater hose connections on it is called, or a part number for it. I tried using RealOEM and looked through all the diagrams of the HVAC system, but couldn't find it. In the attached pictures you can see that one of the hose connections has been broken at some point while the other is in tact.
Does anyone know what this part is called, what the part number might be, or where I might get one?
Thanks!
I've finally got around to tracking the issues down. I'm starting with the heating issue because I'm in outer west Sydney, Australia (at the foot of the Blue Mountains) and its pretty damn cold here atm.
Keep in mind I'm an amateur, and had no clue what I was looking at to start off with. But I REALLY wanted to research and do all the hands on stuff with this car myself. I love working on cars, but my husband is more knowledgable that I am and always ends up taking the lead. This time, I wanted to trouble-shoot and repair it all myself.
With some difficulty, I located the water heater valve... it was not mounted to the firewall and just hanging there, but the electrical connector was hooked up and so were the two hoses (at the time I didn't realise that the hoses were plumbed straight back into the engine instead of going through the firewall and to the heater box).
So:
I tried bleeding the cooling system
I took my stereo head deck and glovebox out looking for the bowden cable attachment to the heater box (and then realised that of course the instructions I was reading were for a left-hand drive 318ti)
I removed the panel under the steering wheel in the right-hand footwell and checked that the bowden cable was moving the flap in the heater box. It works perfectly
I listened for the 'clicking' (or rather, 'clunking') of the heater valve solenoid as my husband moved the temp dial from full cold to cool (at first we had tried moving the temp dial from full hot to warm, but then read somewhere on here that the solenoid energizes on FULL COLD which was a bit anti-intuitive)
By this time I was frustrated because, while it was great everything was functioning properly, I still hadn't found the problem. I started packing up for the night and while I was reconnecting the electrical plug to the water heater valve, my husband pointed out that there were two holes in the firewall just behind the valve that weren't connected to anything. So I did some reading and sure enough, the hoses from my heater valve were supposed to connect up through the firewall to the heater box, but the mechanics who had swapped the engine into the car obviously decided that hooking the heating system up properly was too hard!
So now I get to the point...
I'm having trouble finding out what the yellow plastic part with the heater hose connections on it is called, or a part number for it. I tried using RealOEM and looked through all the diagrams of the HVAC system, but couldn't find it. In the attached pictures you can see that one of the hose connections has been broken at some point while the other is in tact.
Does anyone know what this part is called, what the part number might be, or where I might get one?
Thanks!