Heater line repair
The pandemic, work from home, and layoffs have put a damper on my driving. I would easily put 15-20k miles a year on the truck, in Feburary 2022 I hit 380,000 miles, and I just rolled 389,000 miles, so 9k in 2 years. I figured I’d pass 400,000 by now. I also now have my dad’s Ram truck too which gets some of the miles.
Right before I left for Christmas I had a leaking heater hose connector, where the hose meets the heater core in the firewall. I thought ah hah, I’ll just slap another clamp on there. And it worked, I drove it for a while, got the engine hot, leak stopped, great. I’m not sure how long it had been leaking, occasionally I’d smell coolant, but it wasn’t until a cool day that I just happened to see some steam coming out when I was getting something out of the passenger side.
Two days later after running some errands, the day before I was supposed to fly out, it started leaking again and by the time I pulled into my driveway the hose completely broke off and dumped all the coolant in a giant cloud. What I hadn’t realized until I watched YouTube later was that there was a plastic quick disconnect fitting between the hose and the heater core, that’s what snapped off. Had I known that thing was there I would’ve just taken it directly to the mechanic the first time.
I was really worried that I might have finally done the truck in, this may have caused it to overheat and warp something. Either way it was gonna have to set a while till I got back. Last week I finally got it towed to a mechanic and fortunately it was a simple fix of replacing the hoses and fittings, no other damage was done. It’s been running fine since. I also had them replace the leaking valve cover gaskets, so between the two of them hopefully this fixes my coolant and oil consumption.
To date, here’s all the things I’ve replaced or fixed on the truck in it’s 20 year lifespan. I feel like I go through a lot of batteries. The transmission is the major thing I’ve had to fix, first a rebuild way back in 2010-something and then finally had to replace it entirely. AAA is great for towing, would recommend.
The clear coat on the roof has started to go, I’m debating if I want to spend the money to get it re-sprayed. I’d like to keep this truck as a backup as I’ve learned having two vehicles is pretty handy and want to trade the Ram in on something that’s 4wd.
