Heater core leaking??

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Dragracer

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Aug 23, 2009
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:mad: New to the site so thanks for your input! just bought our first R.V.WOOHOO. It is a 2002 Itasca horizon by Winnebago diesel on a freightliner chassis. We have enjoyed the last few weeks getting to know it, and today we sprung a leak. Antifreeze is dripping at a pretty good rate from the front case. Pretty sure it is the core. Will a Freightliner or a  Winnebago dealer be the one to go to for repairs? Not real familiar with dealers close to the Sterling, Illinois area. Thanks ahead of time for your input.

Jeff
 
I believe Frieghtliner put it on the chassis.

Unless your under warranty you don't need to go to them.  However they have the experience to remove it if necessary.

I recently had my antifreeze changed in my 1998 Chieftain and the petcock broke off.  I had the MH at a Cummins shop for preventive maintenance and they replaced the petcock.

When I had an over heating problem Frieghtliner wanted to pull my radiator with an estimate of 13 hours times the dollar rate.  You may want to spend some time checking all your hoses, connections, petcocks and anything else attached to the radiator.

If your not aware of the blow by oil hose problem you may want to search this site for overheating, blow-by.  The blow by hose is to short and allows an oil mist to collect on the fins.  The oil causes the radiator to collect dirt/dust between the radiator and CAC preventing air to flow.  this has nothing to do with your leak but since your looking into this area it is worth checking out.


Hope you can find you and fix your leak without pulling the radiator.


Russ
 
Jeff
May I suggest you have the heater core bypassed (hook the two hoses together) until you find someone who can fix it at a reasonable price. If you bypass it you can still use the motor home till you find a meck. you feel good about using. Art.
 
Echoing what Art said.. I have bypassed heater cores in the past when I needed to in order to get them to the repair shop and have 'em re-cored.  At least 2 or 3 times (Different rides)  works great

DO NOT just plug the lines, ... doing that will cause problems in many vehicles (I do not know if it will in yours) as the heater core provides a 2nd function on many vehicles.
 
It's a common problem on that year...I have an 02 Horizon and it hasn't happened on mine yet..(Knocking here) The bad news is the front cap has to come off or tilted forward to get to it...About a 1200.00 job....The kinda good news is that you can do it yourself if your handy...Here are 2 good threads on how..


http://www.irv2.com/forums/f101/r-and-r-journey-heater-core-29168.html

http://www.irv2.com/forums/f101/step-by-step-heater-core-replacement-2001-horizon-21195.html
 
Out of curiosity, I checked out the referenced site and am now in a quandry.  There is mention of 0.5 volts to ground from the coolant and I am wondering where this is coming from in the system.  If the engine is grounded and the heater core is grounded with that voltage you will get galvanic corrosion and it can attack any place in the system.  It would appear to me that WB/FL have a design problem with the cooling system/dissimilar materials in the cooling system and they should be the ones solving the problem. 
 
Electrolysis was always an issue on our boat.  What worked for us was to not bond the through-hull fittings.  To bond or not to bond always brings out a spirited discussion in marine circles!
 
I agree Jim...Though a small amount of measurable voltage can be detected in most engine cooling systems, due to reactions between the coolant and cooling system metals, the detected voltage should never exceed a tenth of a volt....I'll have to check my coolant to ground to see what is going on on my rig....
 
I'm probably going to screw this up as I have not worked on corrosion for more than 50 years but if I recall correctly, the item being protected should be negative so the positive ions bond to it.  If that is still true, the coolant should be positive and the metals all negative.  Not sure what positive ions are in the coolant though.
 
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