My heater isn't putting out much heat and my temp gauge stays low...

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.

Joined
Jan 8, 2006
Threads
265
Messages
9,822
Location
Ashland, OR
Website
www.jeffersonstatecruisers.com
A friend called me a while ago with that complaint.... Here's what we found:

DSC06727.JPG


"Hmmmm I wonder where that little rag went.....? Oh well...."

Best not to leave stuff like this in your cooling system...
 
oh man!

i read the title and it said thermostat all over it, but i didnt expect your post to scream thermostat like this!!

how could a guy be that sloppy?

good thing it didnt kill the water pump, but i would be taking the whole engine down to give it a thorough flush
 
That engine is a prime candidate for a Tefba coolant filter. I have one on my truck, it's really quite surprising the crap I find in it sometimes. I check it every time I change my oil, it only takes a few minutes while I wait for the oil to drain. Especially useful on an engine that was recently rebuilt, catching all the gasket schrapnel.

Tefba Coolant Filters for Classic and Performance Cars and Trucks

Tefba4.jpg
 
It's a cramped tight fit on a 22RE, but it's much easier to install one on a 3VZ-E:

Tefba3.jpg


I wish they weren't so darned expensive.
 
Thanks guys!!

This thread just made my day. I'm remembering about 2 months before the headgaskets on mine were getting funny and I had the heater hose valve start not working right, I couldn't move the lever one minute, then it was fine the next. A few days later, the temp gague got all funny, so I popped the cap to check the levels to find a nice 2"x1" w/ small halfround square piece of FIPG floating there. Excess from the waterneck install that had taken a trip through the system.

Next purchase is going to be that TEFBA.
 
I learned about the Tefba filters years ago from a buddy on the 3FE list ("overhanger" here on MUD), for some reason they are really popular with the Jaguar crowd. He also has a late-70's XJ-12 with a V12 engine, that car is amazing to drive but very very difficult to work on. The engine is essentially 2 inline-6 engines married together at the crank, so everything is duplicated: 2 distributors, 2 exhausts, and 2 completely seperate cooling systems (even 2 water pumps). Very weird. So he had 2 Tefbas on his car.

I installed the one of that '94 3VZ-E the day it came back from the dealer getting the HGs changed (note the fresh sticker on the fan shroud). I checked it a few days later and it was almost completely clogged with crap: bits of old gasket, FIPG/RTV shavings, etc. It took a few months to get it to stay clear.
 
Back
Top Bottom