AngusL 10 Posted January 10, 2015 I replaced my VR6 Heater Matrix a few weeks ago and the air was still cold afterwards.... Explored this site and others to see if anyone had seen a problem like this before - Air locks was all I could find. Did all of the massaging of pipes header tank cap off hot engine etc etc. Had a 200 mile round trip during the cold spell and thought enough was enough the heater had to be sorted out... Car drove brilliantly on the whole journey too [ATTACH=CONFIG]80454[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]80455[/ATTACH] but no heat. After a couple of hours of freezing and its no fun. The wife was wrapped up with blankets which is not a good look for my Corrado ! The Auxiliary water pump started humming on shutdown so I bought a Bosch replacement from Germany thanks to a link on here... has not turned up yet so I went after the old one today to see if it could be resurrected in the short term. No blown fuses so the aux pump still has power. No big task to remove and only approx. a 30 mins task. I disconnected the hoses and ?????? take a look at the pics of what I found in the inlet pipe.... I cant quite believe what I am seeing in there it looks like a spiral cable tidy that must have melted and been pushed into the aux pump. It must have been some sort of reinforcement in an inlet pipe. The good design of the aux pump inlet has a basic restrictor which is just 3 legs but it was enough to stop this mess from being pushed into the aux pump and heater matrix. A good clean out and reassembly of the pump and reinstalled and WHAM - HOT air in the car again....... This major blockage in the waterway is what caused the coolant not to circulate through the NEW heater matrix. Can you believe that this amount of rubbish in a cars water system and it still worked. The water was circulating through the small bypass pipe before the aux pump inlet to the top of the header tank. Take a look at those pics and I am not joking it really did come out of the Aux pump inlet. Impressive that the car drove 200 miles (done it twice like this) and has not overheated. All motorway driving so constant airflow. Mole grips are the tool for the water pipe clips - they work excellently. The fact that they lock in the compressed position makes the task of opening and moving the clips easy. The best part is - No damage to the aux pump... A no cost fix even though I have bought a replacement it was sub £40 delivered so will do for a spare. These cars are something else - Heater now fixed I can drive the car as a daily driver now. Hope this helps someone else out there.... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
seanl82 23 Posted January 10, 2015 Those are the innards of the heater matrix or radiator! Never seen that before lol! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jim 1 Posted January 10, 2015 It looks like Pasta or something?! What the hell? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
seanl82 23 Posted January 10, 2015 Guys, it's genuinely the innards of a rad core. Possibly radiator but more likely heater matrix. I cut an old one open once to see if it was clogged up, and these spirals were running through the cores. I've never seen or heard of them coming out like that though! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AngusL 10 Posted January 10, 2015 Hi Guys, Sean I believe you are correct. After calming down and thinking about it the pipe with the spaghetti was the inlet to the aux pump from the heater matrix. There is an arrow showing the direction of water flow. It was the old heater matrix that blew up on my first drive home after picking the car up. Definitely getting this car back to being a daily runner now. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
