7 replies to this topic

[brivinci]

Want to make sure I get this right...
I have all the heater lines in in the engine bay. I have the hose with the control valve going into the firewall hole closest to the center of the car (RHD). My SPi has the heater core take-off on the left side of the heater box with the two outlets front to back. Wondering which hose goes where from the firewall? Does the hose with the control valve go to the front pipe on the heater or the rear one?

[xrocketengineer]

Does this help?  Heater Lines.JPG   1.91MB   157 downloads

Edited by xrocketengineer, 03 February 2012 - 07:29 PM.

[brivinci]

Thanks! I think I got the arragement set in the engine bay, really need to see where the pipes go in the car. Which of the two go to which connection on the heater core.

Thanks!

[R1minimagic]

Doesnt really matter which way the water goes through the matrix

[brivinci]

Really? Maybe I had an air bubble or something because I wasnt getting heat the last time I had it together. Wanted to make sure I had the hose correct first to eliminate that as a possible problem.

[brivinci]

Bringing this back up. Sadly, the motor let go, was taken out, rebuilt and is now back in and I want to make sure I have it right.

So, if you are looking at the bulkhead from the front bumper, there are two hose that go into the interior and to the heater core. A left and right. Then there is a front and back inlets for heater core. Does it matter which goes where?

[brivinci]

Just an update, I got the motor running and up to temp. I turned on the heater and it is now warming up. After looking through old pictures, I decided to switch the pipes on the interior that go to the heater core. Now, the "straight" pipe goes to the rear (closer to boot) heater core outlet, and the pipe with the kink in it goes to the front (closer to bulkhead) outlet. No idea if it really makes a difference but there now is hot air. Maybe I had an air bubble in there that wasnt letting anything by? Who knows I guess. At least something is working.

[AVV IT]

Well looks like you've sorted it now, but it in answer to your question, it makes absolutely no difference which way around you connect the hoses up, because swapping them over just reverses the direction of flow through the matrix. The matrix is essentially just a radiator that will give off heat so long as hot water is flowing through it, so it really doesn't matter which direction it happens to be flowing in.

As I recall though, the top hose as it passes through the bulkhead (the inlet), is supposed to be connected to the front most outlet on the matrix, and the lower hose that connects to the bottom hose on the rad (the outlet), should be connected to the rearmost outlet on the matrix. If you have still have standard heater hoses though, this should be fairly obvious as you look at it, because the outlet hose on an Spi should actually be a molded hose that's just long enough to reach the rearmost outlet on the matrixhttp://www.minispare...|Back to search. The inlet is just a length of standard 5/8" heater hose though and should be longer than the molded hose, in order to reach slightly further to the front most outlet on the matrix.

The molded hose has been obsolete for some time now, so if you have replacement hoses, they are likely to just be lengths of standard 5/8" heater hose cut to size.

Edited by AVV IT, 12 March 2013 - 07:13 PM.