z28guy

Hey, I'm new to this site so I'm not completely Sync' with wat goes on here, but I have a 1984 Mercedes Benz 190d and I have a problem. There is Coolant/Anti-Freeze leaking into the Drivers side of the car.. I've removed the centre console and the bottom pannel trying to find out where it is leaking from. I'm trying to cut back on paying someone to take everything out so i decided to do a bit of the job myself. I know that where it is leaking is a silverish pipe that comes out from the firewall into the centre console area, unaccesable to an uneducated enthusiast. I can see that the coolant is coming from what looks like a resevoir in the console area but i cannot access any other part without taking the whole dash out because it looks like it needs to be removed from above not below(what i thought). I just want to know if anyone has had this problem before, if there was a recall or service bulletin put up for this problem. I just would like to know if an O' Ring failed or just not sealed properly so i know what the problem is before i bring it to the expert. Im pretty sure this is a big part of the heating in the car. There is a valve in the engine compartment and iam able to shut off the flow of coolant through the system and heating but the engine heats up to an unsafe level in about 5-10km...plus there is no more heat when the valve is tunred.. Please Help Me.

MTI

There are two well known causes for coolant leaks in the interior. First, and this is what your conditions sounds like, is a heater valve leak. The valve is on the right side of the firewall, downstream from the aux coolant pump that has the hose from the "water" pump. The other source, which usually results in hot coolant ends up on your legs, is a leak in the heater core. To access the heater core, you will need to remove the entire dash.

z28guy

Thank you, Iam more aware on what my problem is now. Do you know how many hours of labour it would take to resolve this problem or how much the heater core would cost?

mctwin2kman

Heater core is under 100 bucks and it takes about 4-5 hours to R and R the dash and replace the core. Not a bad job really, just time consuming. Once you do it though you see everything under the dash and get a better understanding of how it all works. Plus it will only take you about an hour to remove the dash in the future since you will know where everything is.

z28guy

Ok, thanks alot.