Dakota R/T owners
My heater takes forever to warm up and does not cook me like it used too. Probably clogging up. I am resealing the intake because the truck is pinging and it has visible oil in it.
This might be easy to fix. My "mini white whale" project was mostly clogged, here's how:
Either drain some out or be quick. Get a long length of scrap heater hose, and some way to clamp the hoses. I used 2 vise grips and 4 small scraps of strap steel. You could also make wood ones out of 6" or so long 1X wood and long bolts. Clamp off the driver side hose in a convenient spot say, up near the throttle body. Clamp off the pass. side FORWARD of the splice fitting IE between the splice fitting and the intake
Unhook the heater hose from the long steel fitting down on the driver's side front, and hook your scrap hose to the pump fitting. "tied up" to the hood latch, etc to keep the system from draining further
So now you have the driver's side disconnected, clamped, and the water pump has a long vertical hose to keep the coolant from falling out
Now on pass side, unhook the splice, leave the splice in the firewall side of the hose if you can. So now that hos is clamped on the forwardmost half, and the firewall half is open
Now rig a garden hose fitting into the hose on the driver's side. This is opposite normal flow which is what you want, as you are "backflushing" it
Now hook a piece of scrap hose to the firewall hose on the pass. side.
Now just flush the thing. Easy.
IF YOU GUYS HAVE SOME IDEAS on a good, cheap, compact filter screen for these heaters, I'd be all ears. Some folks rigg them up with dishwasher/ clothes washer strainers and fittings. You can buy them for like ??60 bucks??
