Leaking bulkhead heater fitting

[1996 850 T5]

Heres how NOT to spend a Friday night...

Ages ago after replacing the engine, when I came to clip the heater hoses back into the bulkhead, the bottom one (heater return) was leaking a significant amount of coolant out. So I bypassed the heater, and had both the heater feed/return plumbed together with a bit of hose (so no heating...groan)

I thought that it was just the hose barb/'o' rings that needed replacing so ordered some new hoses, with fitting kit etc.

Came to fit them tonight thinking it was gonna be a quick fix

It looks like when took the engine out, I must have slightly strained the bulkhead fittings, probably by forgetting to disconnect them when dropping the subframe/engine out (school boy error I know)

Anyhow, after ripping the carpets and heater matrix out this evening, I managed to wrestle the offending article off the bulkhead and inspect the culprit...





you can just see the crack in the locating boss here:



and opened up slightly:




One removing it, the 'o'rings and plastic spacers on the pipes to the heater matrix had all gone hard and disintegrated, so rather than forking out a load of wedge ordering the bits from Volvo....Im looking at maybe just binning the whole setup and replacing with suitable heater hose and grommets etc

I have no idea why volvo made it so complex in the first instance, seems like one hell of an overdesigned piece of kit to begin with!!

Anyone else had to replace one of these? Any tips?

[AndysR]

Eccentric design from a Swedish company? Surely not....

I wouldn't have thought the gaskets and o ring's are that expensive to buy new and surely the best fix is to use the original way of connecting everything up? Or is that an old fashioned opinion...

[1996 850 T5]

I would usually replace like for like, but in this instance, i have no idea where I would find this part...there are no dealerships over here (Isle of Man) and what they charge to post items like this is ridiculous. Plus is such a pain to get to.

Ill get 2 x 4" lengths of heater hose, should do exactly the same job, be more resiliant, and less to go wrong imo (most importantly cheap haha).

[flyingbrick]

LOL. I had the same problem when I had a engine change 12 months ago.
Anyway I bought the new seals an clips.((*&(*%&%(^()

What we done in the end was bypassed the clip surround that you are showing in the pictures and just put some 5/8 or 16mm hose from the matrix straight through the bulkhead on to heater pipes on the other side.
Sorted mate.

I had a crack in the bottom one wot a pain in the butt finding it.......

Cheers Mark.........

[1996 850 T5]

Hoses it is then!

Cheers Brick

Joe

[AndysR]

I would usually replace like for like, but in this instance, i have no idea where I would find this part...there are no dealerships over here (Isle of Man) and what they charge to post items like this is ridiculous. Plus is such a pain to get to.

Ill get 2 x 4" lengths of heater hose, should do exactly the same job, be more resiliant, and less to go wrong imo (most importantly cheap haha).

Oh fair play