Old F-150 design flaw
 

Cab air intake is where the window wipers are. My truck has no AC. It's 29 years old. Other day was looking at vent on drivers side, couldn't close it. Winter will be here one day. Can't get vent cover off because of parking brake. So I spent +- 30 minutes w/screwdriver and shopvac trying to clean out. Did get front cover off heater. Below are 29 years worth of oak leaves. If this works!
http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k1...drivervent.jpg

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k1...pw/leaves1.jpg

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k1...ypw/leaves.jpg

I like clean simple vehicles. like my 65 panel truck.

By clean I don't mean no leaves. I mean straightforward mechanics. You look at it and you see the problem, no need to hook it up to a computer.

That is a great truck. Looks like white oak.

I love old car heaters only slightly less than modern car heaters.*

The thing I love the most is the way that every car since about 1950 has been built fully around the heater, so that you have to start by removing the tow bar, tail lights, rear seats, carpet, headlining, garage door, kitchen sink etc etc etc before you can get to any part of the heating system. Any attempt to short cut this process will be met with several hours of swearing and cut knuckles, before you decide that removing the tow bar etc will be the way to go, and start over. When you finally do get to the heater, you'll have no way of draining the heater matrix before you remove the pipes, so you get the beaut rusty water tsunami upon disconnection. (Bet you wish you'd lifted the carpet now, don't you). Installation is the reverse of the above process, just with more swearing.

Don't get me started on siezed operating cables and flaps... :mad:




*Hagar has recently fitted a custom heater setup to his project car. This involved cannibilising (sp) several modern cars for parts. The scars are not yet healed, and the heater valve is still not right, despite being on version 4.

The first '57 Chevy I owned sprung a leak in the heater core coating the inside of the windshield with antifreeze at the most inopportune moment. Having done that and emptying the first aid kit, I discovered the heater core pulls out through the firewall by removing 4 screws. AAAaaaarrrrhhhhhh! :smack:
This is why I have the factory service manual for every car I've owned since then.

I drove an '81 VW Rabbit convertible for a little while a couple years ago. It was shipped out here to me from southern California, and when I got to cleaning it and trying to bring the thing back to life, I found sand everywhere. There were piles of it inside body panels, the bumpers, the heater and air vents, and anywhere else you can think of.

Buster, that's not a design defect, that's a *feature*. People pay good money for lawn vacuums.