Heater Box

5^th April 2014

The Heater Box and electrolysis. What a mess! Obviously as the heater box uses hot water recycled through the radiator, the chances of a water leak over the past 45 years of its life was always high. And apparently it has leaked and working in conjunction with the Master cylinder box, they’ve put on a brilliant show of trying to outdo each other competing to see who can make their respective areas the mankiest! I think it’s a draw.

Was pretty straightforward to rip the heater box out but it was a right git trying to remove the cable attached to the heater flap. Not looking forward to trying to put that back in.

The box was full of surface rust and after pulling the five retaining clips off and ripping the guts out of it, tested the water radiator reservoir (or whatever it’s called) and it was still solid and not leaking. It was far too intricate and fiddly to spend wire brushing so made up a solution of water with soda ash and stuck it in a bucket of water using the battery charger with one lead connected to the cathode and one to what would be now the anode and used electrolysis overnight to rid the rusty box of its surface rust. Worked well and after drying and cleaning, was ready for some zinc primer and a repaint.

Made sure the water reservoir thingy was cleaned and the fins straightened with an air conditioning condenser comb. Motor was pulled apart, cleaned, painted and reassembled. Everything has been zinc primed before painting with 4 coats of paint and a 2 clearcoats. That will be the minimum standard for all painted items on the car. Don’t know if that’s too much or too little, but I’m at peace with the numbers.

Ready for installation once I've got the rest of the engine bay ripped out and painted.