The Camaro Club (UK)

Well, good news and bad news.

Fitted the new water pump, AC Bypass pulley and new belt tensioner pulley last weekend and the motor is now SO much quieter. I can now hear far more of the v8 burble as the engine noise is gone. Bearings in the water pump were very shot indeed.

Took it out for a test drive and finally discovered why the heater matrix had been bypassed before. Put it on 'heat' again (it worked fine the first few times) and booted it (laid a nice black number 11 on the road at the same time ). Suddenly the windscreen misted up and I could smell hot water. I asked my mate in the passenger seat if he had wet feet, sure enough he did. The heater matrix was / had split. Bu**er.

So now the ENTIRE dash is out. New matrix on order from Summit. ACDelete panel STILL hasn't turned up. All the bits should be here this week I've been told so I know what next weekend holds for me.

I will try and post some pics of the entire car (haven't taken any of the missing dash yet) and post them against my Newbie post.

Air removal will have to wait a while longer

Thanks again for help and advice. I'll keep you all posted!

Cheers, Jon

Why some decide to bypass the throttle body coolant.

OK, next step.

Want to get rid of the heater valve as well now. The one that redirects hot water to the heater matrix in the dash, controlled by the vacuum line. Main reason is that it's bl**dy ugly sat on top of the rocker cover and I have new shiny ones to fit that I'd like to be able to see!

I was going to relocate it with longer hoses, but reading on some USA forums most people actually remove it leaving the heater matrix 'hot' permanently, heat is then controlled by the vacuum flaps only in the heater box. Anyone done this here? Any adverse problems you can think of?

As I've just put a new matrix in that should be OK. When I do this I'll replace the hoses as well so I can route them out of the way. Apparently most new cars are like this anyway and it'll certainly clean up the engine bay a bit more.....

Any views?

Interestingly, i was looking to find that bypass part as mine doesn't have it... it just has a 90 degree bent pipe in its location so i guess at some point the bypass must have failed and then it got replaced with some pipe. I'll grab a pic of it if i can. Doesn't seem to be an issue - I have been using it like that for over 6 months, and it looks a bit aged (the pipe) so it's been on there for a while. When i turn the heater control to cool, i get cool air (no a/c on mine). Weather the flaps are open or not, if the dial is in the hot position i get warm arm, if its in cold i get cold air.

The one thing i'm planning on doing is doing the throttle body bypass, so i'll get a longer bit of hose one day and run it straight from the manifold to the hater matrix to skip the throttle body.

Hope that helps!

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