Tuscan Mk1 Heater Problem - Help required please!

[puckrup]

Hi,

The heater on my Mk1 Tuscan does not work well at all, it gets "warm" at best after 1 hour but no more. With this lovely Scottish weather just now it is positively Baltic driving the Tiv.

At last service Dreadnought noted "Requires new heater flap motor to rectify heater operation fault"

Today I removed the heater radiator to inspect the flap motor - it works fine - the flap does move back and fore on operation of the heater switch. The fan does blow air when switched on.

Question - is there a valve or something that allows hot water into the heater matrix? According to Dreadnoght there is, I cant find it, only 1 pipe in and 1 pipe out.

Any help or advice greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Neil

[smithy.e]

no valve the water runs through the heater matrix all the time the only thing that controls the heat is the flap you could have an air lock or a blocked matrix or a faulty heater ECU wich controls when the flap opens. Both in and out pipes should be hot.

smithy.e

[puckrup]

Thanks Smithy. I posted in 2 forums by mistake (general TVR). Was advised that there was a motorised valve (also by Dreadnought more worryingly). I seem to have fixed it IF I have got the flap in the right position - can you describe where it should be? See following:...........

I have double checked - there is a thicker fabric type blue hose that comes from just below expansion tank in front of car and seems to be flow in. There is no valve electronic or otherwise on this pipe. The thinner black pipe returns in front of SP6 engine then turns underneath airbox towards rear of engine? Sorry for poor description, not to au fait with Tiv mechanics!

Anyway - in "cold" setting the flap was set midway. It only moved slightly when set to hot, seemed to be snagging. I have now manually adjusted flap towards nearside front wing. It is closed tight shut in horizontal plane. (heater control actually indicates cold).

Test run yesterday, 3 degrees celcius outside and low and behold, hot air!

Not sure if this is fixed, not sure if aircon will work, left heater control set to cold (blue led). Wonder if control is actually reversed as if set to hot the flap moves towards centre at a bout 30 degrees from horizontal.

Any thoughts? (Oh, phoned Dreadnought who originally diagnosed fault, they were most unhelpful and not forthcoming with any information, suppose no cash, no info?)

Neil

[Whitey]

got any photos of any of this? I'm due to rip it all to bits soon when I have the time!

[smithy.e]

AS you have hot forget about the pipes. Is the flap snaging when the lever is disconnected from the stepper motor?. I have been told that the plastic gears in the gearbox on the stepper can melt this could cause snaging.I think the wider the flap is open the hotter as for the heater control this COULD be caused by the snaging or possible a faulty heater ECU or the stepper motor out of sync with the flap. I think I would completely slacken the grub screw on the stepper spindle then manually position the flap in the closed position (ie vertical)with the control on cold then tighten the grub screw.

good luck
smithy.e