OK guys I know it is winter, but never too early to be thinking air conditioning.......I saw a fancy valve to shuttoff all coolant to the heater core to help cool the cab more when you use your AC. I also see some manual heater core shutoff valves installed on the heater hose..............Has anyone done this and does it work..........I mean installing a $20 valve versus a $150.00 thingy or so makes more sense to me...........so how about it........pros and cons guys..........and isn't there already a valve on our trucks to do this.......and would putting in a manual valve that could be turned off in the summer be better.........

96 powerstroke 5 speed manual, stock except the air cleaner and BB and beefy GPR. What a difference this site makes

 

a garden hose spicket will work just fine on both heater hoses. almost every international (especially school busses) have it set up like that.

 

some of the old rangers had a vacuum operated bypass valve that works great on our trucks. just connect it to the vacuum line for the air conditioner and when you turn on the ac it bypasses the hot water back to the return hose and no more hot spot at the passengers feet.

 

Here's a few pictures of mine:









The white vacuum line by the blower motor closes the fresh air intake when the AC is on max. If you tee into that line the valve will divert the water back to the engine instead of through the heater core.

 

F87Z-18495- is the part number I used, it's for a 96 Explorer

 

You can get the valve pretty cheap from HERE and THIS place also sells them and has a list of other vehicles that also use the same valve.

 

Just curious, is there a need to divert vs. just stopping the coolant?

 

No, not really. I did the bypass valve because it was automatic and cheaper than buying two separate ***** valves and hose barbs.

 

You could always run a dedicated short piece of heater hose between the two connections on the engine, cap off the fittings on the core and store the "live" heater hoses for the season. About 10 minutes twice a year. A wee bit of coolant loss to replace. Only downside is that in much of the country, there's no "right" day to do the transition in spring or fall; in March and October, we can sometimes go from 80F to 20F within a few days.

If you go the valve route, you really should only need a valve on the core inlet side, right? With it closed, there's gonna be no flow through either hose, so there's no need to valve the return (core-to-engine) hose. You're essentially mimicking the old-school heater control valve.