Heater core leak question

[doctorb]

So I've dug around on these forums and basically figured out that what I have is a leaky heater core spewing excess moisture through my heating system, resulting in fog blowing out my heating vents when the engine gets crankin'. Turns my defroster into a froster.

Question is: I've read it's a huge pain in the ass to access the heater core for replacement and I have too many other projects at the moment (converting to veggie and installing sound system) to worry about this right now. Is there a temporary fix that will last me a year or two? I'm thinking of pulling the feed and return lines to the core, just doing a flush and then running some kind of crap through only the heater core that will plug up the leak for a little while. Any suggestions?

 

[Elbert]

if you have a leaking heater core.... you will have coolant leaking in the interior of the truck (under the dash), most likely you will smell the coolant too. Get truck to operating temp. turn on heat and see if you smell coolant, check for leaks... it should be obvious if leaking.

Vapor from the vents would not lead me to belive that the heater core is necessarily leaking...

The shortcut is to bypass the heater core under the hood, such that you don't have coolant flowing to the heater core... This is not a fix, just a temp solution

 

[doctorb]

There is definitely vapor coming from the vents when the heat is on, but not when it is cool. It smells to me like coolant. I don't notice a substantial coolant leak under the dash. I'm still thinking small leaks in the heater core pushing coolant vapor through the heating system, just not a big enough leak to dump into the cab in liquid form.

Is there anything else this could be?

Can I fix these leaks w/out a core swap/removal if it is indeed leaking?

 

[lehiguy]

I did my heater core recently (it lasted 335,000 miles and 21 years) and it wasn't that bad. I even have AC. I wouldn't be too scared of it. I will tell you that I got to a point where I realized that I would need to pull the entire dash, or make it flex outward about 1/2". I made it flex with no ill effects. Start at the glove box and then the stereo and other facia and you will figure it out.