Well, back to square one. Two years ago, as I was leaving one of the local Flaps in the ‘62 C-10, antifreeze started running out under the dash onto the passenger floorboard. Typical heater core leak symptom, right? Being the procrastinator that I am I just bypassed the core and ignored the problem. I don’t drive it much in the winter anyway. Well last week I pulled the core and visually checked for leaks. Couldn’t find any obvious leakage. I figured a pressure test was needed so I began looking for a radiator shop close to me. The EPA has kindly taken care of that for me. Everyone has shut down with exception of one in OKC. He said they are backed up until after the first of the year. They do a lot of oil field related work. I did a lot of searching and so did Woogeroo, to find a new core. After several exhausting hours I did find a couple of places showing the correct tank at prices well over the $275 mark. Add in a replacement valve for another $350 and it went quickly out of my price range. This morning I thought with a little ingenuity I could rig up a way to pressure test the core myself. No problem getting things set up and upon pressuring up to about 20psi with water absolutely no leaks. Yup no leaks found. The only thing I had done was remove the control valve and put a small bead of Red RTV around where the valve seals to the tank and put the valve back on. The mechanical part of the valve operates as it should but I didn’t test the thermostat part of it. My question now is, where was it leaking and do I just put it back in the truck? Suggestions.
