hey everybody its Justin welcome back to the BTR garage today we have a quick
video where we're gonna show you how to recover from a heater core failure in
your Ford F250 or your Powerstroke diesel truck this might apply to some
other vehicles as well with similar heater core setups the heater core
basically is what is responsible for providing the heat for your HVAC system
or the inside air conditioning and heater system the way it works is there
are basically two lines that go from the water pump on the truck and the engine
block that send warm coolant through the heater core in one side out the other
and then when that heater core is hot the HVAC system in the truck takes that
for heating the air now what can happen in my case I got basically broken down
out at the racetrack a couple weeks ago the heater core cracked somewhere and
started leaking coolant underneath the truck and also inside the passenger
footwell because that's where the heater core is
located so I was basically stranded out at the racetrack and had to come up with
some kind of fix to get the truck back on the road because you can't drive with
a cracked heater core you're leaking coolant all over the place and
eventually you will run out so what you can do to get around that is actually
bypass the heater core by cutting the hoses in the engine bay and connecting
them together with some type of splice anything that you can find really that
can put those hoses together and allow the coolant just to go through the
system through the hoses rather than going through the heater core so what
I'm gonna do is show you how to do that how to quickly bypass the heater core in
the event of a heater core failure and I'll show you the tools that I use or
the pieces that I use to get this done it's pretty simple pretty easy and you
can find parts for it at pretty much any auto parts store fortunately I had a
friend drive me to the auto parts store back in town when I was out of the race
the other weekend and we got just a little coupler to help put those lines
together and I was able to get back on the road so we're gonna get started and
show you what I did to get the truck back up and running
so first off we'll take a look inside the truck where the heater court was
leaking as you can see if you look closely you can see a drip and it's
landing on my floor mat down there this is the heater core exposed in a
different video I'll actually show you how to pull everything apart and replace
that heater core but this video we're just gonna simply show you how to bypass
the heater core but again you can see where it has leaked cracked somewhere in
there I didn't exactly find out where the leak was but lots of coolant filling
up the plastic compartment and trying to soak it up with the towel there we'll
jump into the engine bay and show you the two hoses that you need to cut these
are coming out of the heater core from the firewall area in the inside of the
cabin you need to cut each hose just after the intake pipe there and we'll
show you a little bit closer view of where they come out of the firewall from
the inside of the car so the hose on the right is going to your water pump the
hose on the left is going to the engine block on the truck and just refer to the
image earlier where we cut those now looking at the other end of the hoses
you'll see this is the hose that goes to the water pump on the truck you can
trace that back and under the little plastic cover and see where it connects
to the water pump down there and then the other hose on the other side where
we had cut it's goes to the engine block on the truck these are the hoses that
you need to connect together in order to bypass your heater core
now to connect the hoses together ideally you want to use a coolant hose
connector or coupler like this one here you can find them at pretty much any
auto store as I mentioned earlier I had a friend drive me to a local auto shop
in order to pick one up but pretty much you can use anything that will get the
job done a sockets or another piece of tubing or anything that you can salvage
that will connect those hoses together before the short term until you can get
it fixed properly I even keep one of these in my glove box now just in case
this happens again in the future now moving on this shows us just how we
connect the coupler to the hoses pretty straightforward pretty simple slide the
coupler into one end and then slide it into the other and then attach some hose
clamps to keep things together you really don't need them it is pretty
tight as it is without the hose clamps but if you have the hose clamps
available it is a good idea to use them alright everybody there you go all done
a quick and easy way to bypass your heater core in the event of a failure
hopefully you never have to use this video but if you do this will make the
job a little bit easier and enable you to get back on the road and not be
broken down or stranded somewhere if that heater core does indeed fail so
thanks again everybody for watching I hope you enjoyed the video and I hope it
was helpful if you have any thoughts comments or questions please leave them
down below like usual I would love to hear from you stick around for more good
stuff coming up real soon I am checking out and will talk to you all next time