mikev88

I was chasing a few vacuum problems, but everything now seems to work well. The vacuum valves operates and the heater valve seems to do a good job at stopping flow when closed, air became warm only when i opened it. Space is no problem, probably not necessary to trim the core pipe too.

Yes, I wanted to replace this stock valve which , according to my analysis is a normally closed valve although my seals were so rotten it wasn't anymore! If your car has no AC I think you don't need it.

I almost went the tape way too, i've got some good 3M stuff but after lying under the dash for a few hours, I decided I didn't want to do it again soon! Definately still a rats nest. For those who don't have factory air, I would recommend to source a longer cable and move the valve to the engine bay. The four seasons valve is very nice and closes the flow completely and opens progressively, which should help the stock system. With factory air, I prefered the rats nest somewhere I won't see it!

It took a while but I think i've finished my conversion. It looks redneck compared to Captain's beautiful Stainless Steel work. It's more of a bush fix. I’ll try to detail it so the next guy can use it as a starting point to make a better job than me. So modifying the the airbox door is easy. Used a little piece of steel and some epoxy glue and screws. Must trim the screws flat on the other side. Trimmed the pipes about ¾’’ and made some sort of a bead using a DIY bead roller made with old vise grips, a washer and a welder. Room for improvement here… but it will do. Also added a piece of foam to the top since it is a bit shorter than the stock one. The foam keeps it nice and snug in place when the airbox door is bolted in place. I looked for an alternative to drilling the firewall. I realized that 11/16 grommets enter perfectly in the stock hole. I then found these ‘’slip on’’ adapter for plumbing. They are just the perfect size to enter the grommet tightly. A 5/8 coolant hose slides on them nice and tight. You just have to cut the small end. I kept all the valves inside the cabin for now. I used a dayco 87675 hose which I trimmed only the wye part. I went to the auto part store which had a Gates 18937 hose. It has two nice tight 90deg bend in it so by cutting it in half you can finish the rest of the job. One part that took me a lot of time is adjusting the cable. It needs to be trimmed shorter, and bent correctly but also, the stock valve has a linear front to back movement, the 74827 has an arc to it’s movement. The stock stiff cable did not like that and would bind up. So I made a little adapter using some Delrin. Works like a charm. Take your cable out of the sleeve, polish it a bit with some steel wool and lube it at the same time. There is a good amount to be trimmed off, so trim a little bit at a time until you get the hang of it. Connected inside the engine bay. If you are quick you don’t need to drop the coolant. Mine was looped , lifted it up above the rad, uncoupled and quickly coupled it again. No major leakage, Everything looks as tightly packaged as stock, so i'm not too worried about space. I'll confirm once everything is operational.

So thanks to prime I got the valve. Turns out the picture on amazon is wrong and shows a 74827. So the 74828 I got has the bracket on the wrong side. I could still check fitment. Using a trimme dayco 87675 and a 90 deg bend you can package everything quite nicely if you don't install the stock brackets at all. The cable would need a little trimming as it is a few inches too long and the valve needs the stem drilled for the stock wire hookup style.. It is also probably possible to retain the stock valve and using a trimmed Dayco 87675 , a 90 deg elbow, a straight union where the valve goes and a Dayco 87653 u bend. Which I might just try. However this is all without brackets, not sure if it can be made to fit, i'll try, otherwiwe I will think of a way to secure all of this to avoid rattles.

Heres what i've done. Sorry for the quick mock up pics... Since my car had the airbox still installed, I used the factory end caps for holding the escort core. Simply made a small cut and bent metal like a tab to keep it tight and a little bit of glue so it doesn't slide out. Drilled the holes using the distance from the little tab on the cover (which is what the stock end covers rest on) as a reference to keep everything centered. Worked nicely. The core rests nicely one the stock holder tab and slides in tightly into the airbox. Will need a few strips of self adhesive foam and will be perfect. Then I removed the pass through half of the stock valve bracket to keep only the part which holds the heater control valve which I wanted to keep. I had to drill two new mounting holes for it, as the bracket would hit the pipe on the core. If you do not use the stock end cap as holders and made a shelf like captain obvious, you could probably bolt it into the stock position as you could mount the escort core higher. But if your airbox is still in the car, the core end cap solution is much easier. So in this scenario, a straight piece of pipe would come from the engine compartment, connect to the 74604 valve, then the dayco 87653 u bend would connect to the heater control valve inlet. Connecting the outlet of the heater control valve to the inlet of the core would necessitate a search for the correct pipe. Perhaps a dayco 87675 with a 90 deg bend and a union would work. The outlet of the core would be a simple L pipe like captain showed us. So in a quick mock up, I think with quite a lot of fiddling and searching for pipes, perhaps shortening one of the core outlet you could make it fit using the 74604 valve and no stock passthrough. However, it is a very tight situation, not very pleasant to work on while the dash is still in the car. So i'm giving up on that. Since captain pointed out that the stock setup has too much heat (if you close the heater valve and blow through it, there is just a bit of restriction, but it doesn't even come close to shutting off) I'm going to setup the 74604 inline with a four seasons 74827 cable operated heater valve. Right now i'm thinking of mounting it in the cabin as I don't feel like bothering to find a new longer cable, unless you guys can point me towards one. I might put the vacuum valve under the hood and the heater valve in the cabin to make some space if necessary also. Amazon delivers the valve today, if that works, it would be a simple solution, especially for those without factory AC. I'll post results over the weekend. Finally, the stock heater valve is 250$, mine is rebuilt. Any chance I can take this out without removing the whole dash+airbox? It breaks my heart to cut the copper thingy but i'm scared at the amount of work necessary to take it out!

Thanks for those pics, my airbox is in the car so test fittings isn't exactly a nice job. It seems like there is plenty of space for what I want to do. Makes perfect sense. I'm gonna attempt to fit everything inside with a 4 seasons valve that I purchased. It would be a solution for those who want to retain AC. If it's too tight i'll relocate everything to the engine bay.

Captain, Just wanted to confirm with you if you actually assembled this method and if the clearance was alright once the whole airbox, fan e.t.c was mounted. I'm gonna try for a hybrid version, in which I will not use the factory feedthrough, I will however retain the factory heater control valve. I'll post pictures once it is done. Also, general question for everyone, my car is a factory AC which is non fonctional right now. Factory AC cars have a valve valve (the one with the feedthrough unit attached), which I think is a simple vaccum stop valve to make sure no coolant goes into the core when the AC is on. My question is, on non factory AC car, is this valve also present? Or is the heater control valve (the one with the copper wire)enough to stop most of the flow into the core . Although I have sourced a replacement from another car, if it is not needed, the piping would be a lot more simple. Thanks for the help. I'll post my version of the fix in a few days.

Oh how glad I am to see this thread revived! I've been waiting 6 months for spectra cooling (I live near their production facility) to make a custom core so that my rad shop can remove the end tanks and re-weld them on the new core... Seems they have other priorities. I finished my floors and now I'm itching to get the car back on the road. I"m ordering one right now! Waiting for the rest of the pics, and Capt'n, how much swearing would be necessary to do this while the airbox is still in the dash? EDIT: Took a quick look, seems like buku swearing but not impossible.

Thanks Cap! Take your time, i'm still installing the new mishimoto rad. Turns out the rad shop owner is a muscle car guy. He rebuilds original rads for show cars. He says he can't make a living repairing rads anymore, but although he can't make much money out of it, he still enjoys it and does a few a year for people he meets at car shows. He will check how much a custom core would cost for it but would probably be more than your solution so I will probably go this way in the end anyways. Aluminum will last much longer. But if it's reasonable I might go for it just to support the dying art!

I'm gonna give this a try. I'm redoing both valves, one I'm rebuilding using the ballkamp kit, the other I found something similar in the 4 seasons catalog. My heater core looked great, but I had a rad shop pressure test it to be sure before I put everything back together, it didn't go well... Being in Canada, after the exchange rate and duties a new one would come to over 500$. Any way you could repost a few of your final pictures to give me a start Captain obvious?