3.0L Heater Mod?
madmanmapper
12-04-2007, 02:36 PM
As many of you know, I have a '93 LeBaron convertible with the 3.0L V6.
According to my dad: "these old 3 liter Chryslers always have bad heat." It's true for my Baron. Also according to my dad: "you should just drive your Concorde in the winter." But my Conny is supposed to be a sunday driver, Baron's the daily driver. It has the crappy heat that blows cold when stopped and idling. Higher rev, higher temp, yet still not enough to keep me toasty. Here's what I know: my radiator is full, air bubble free (I burp the upper hose when checking the coolant level), and the hoses that go to the heater core appear to come from the lower radiator pipe and also from some place on the intake manifold. I don't know how my thermostat is, but my engine always runs pretty cool, which could obviously cause the problem. Now, recently, I also owned a '91 Baron convertible with the 3.0L, a project car to sell. I changed the water pump and thermostat on that one and it also had crappy heat, in the summer. Also, my friend owns a Dodge Dynasty, also a K car derivative, basically identical to the Baron under the hood, except with the 3.3L. It has the same problem, and I'm assuming that it has the same heater hose routing as the Baron. Also, my Concorde with the 3.3L has toasty heat in 5-10 minutes of idling in freezing Chicago winter.
Now, I wonder, does anyone know how I could modify the heater hose setup so I get maximum toastiness? I could manage a little bit of welding and such. Has it been done before? Or could there be some other problem, like the heater core valve or something?
I would just ask my dad, but since he hasn't suggested a fix yet, that means he doesn't know, which means if I ask him, I'll wind up taking my Baron to the shop and working on it for the whole day with a ton of crazy fixes and tweaks, only to have the same problem at the end of the day and my dad will tell me to just junk the Baron and drive the Concorde.
According to my dad: "these old 3 liter Chryslers always have bad heat." It's true for my Baron. Also according to my dad: "you should just drive your Concorde in the winter." But my Conny is supposed to be a sunday driver, Baron's the daily driver. It has the crappy heat that blows cold when stopped and idling. Higher rev, higher temp, yet still not enough to keep me toasty. Here's what I know: my radiator is full, air bubble free (I burp the upper hose when checking the coolant level), and the hoses that go to the heater core appear to come from the lower radiator pipe and also from some place on the intake manifold. I don't know how my thermostat is, but my engine always runs pretty cool, which could obviously cause the problem. Now, recently, I also owned a '91 Baron convertible with the 3.0L, a project car to sell. I changed the water pump and thermostat on that one and it also had crappy heat, in the summer. Also, my friend owns a Dodge Dynasty, also a K car derivative, basically identical to the Baron under the hood, except with the 3.3L. It has the same problem, and I'm assuming that it has the same heater hose routing as the Baron. Also, my Concorde with the 3.3L has toasty heat in 5-10 minutes of idling in freezing Chicago winter.
Now, I wonder, does anyone know how I could modify the heater hose setup so I get maximum toastiness? I could manage a little bit of welding and such. Has it been done before? Or could there be some other problem, like the heater core valve or something?
I would just ask my dad, but since he hasn't suggested a fix yet, that means he doesn't know, which means if I ask him, I'll wind up taking my Baron to the shop and working on it for the whole day with a ton of crazy fixes and tweaks, only to have the same problem at the end of the day and my dad will tell me to just junk the Baron and drive the Concorde.
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