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[terry paget]

2008 1.8 Vectra saloon petrol manual
I broke the thermostat to throttle pipe on this car, could not get a new pipe due to lockdown, so stuck it in with high temp epoxy. Joint is fine, but now I find car has no cabin heat. Might the epoxy join be to blame?
Previously cabin heat was poor, now there is none. Please advise.

[BazaJT]

Do the heater pipes in the engine bay where they go through the bulkhead get warm/hot? Could be a partially/totally blocked heater matrix.

[terry paget]

Running my two Vectras side by side, the saloon gets up to temperature much faster than the estate, but saloon cabin gets no heat, while the estate cabin soon warms up.  Both heater hoses get hot on the estate, on the saloon the upper (passenger side) pipe gets warm, but the bottom (driver side) remains cold.

Looks like blocked heater matrix, don't it?

Are they hard to change? Haynes makes it sound easy, unusual.

And yet, when I refilled the system with coolant, I removed the passenger side hose under the bonnet until coolant flooded out of it, and it soon did so. That suggests heater matrix not blocked.

[Nick W]

And yet, when I refilled the system with coolant, I removed the passenger side hose under the bonnet until coolant flooded out of it, and it soon did so. That suggests heater matrix not blocked.

Why not? In a blocked non-crossflow radiator, water will flow in the inlet, straight along the tank, and out the outlet. That means it's bypassing  the core, and you're not getting the benefit of the heat.


My Omega one was a good example of this: I pried off the tank, and all but two of the cores were so badly silted up I couldn't poke some lockwire down them. No wonder that flushing it made very little difference to it's effectiveness.

[terry paget]

And yet, when I refilled the system with coolant, I removed the passenger side hose under the bonnet until coolant flooded out of it, and it soon did so. That suggests heater matrix not blocked.

Why not? In a blocked non-crossflow radiator, water will flow in the inlet, straight along the tank, and out the outlet.That means it's bypassing  the core, and you're not getting the benefit of the heat.


My Omega one was a good example of this: I pried off the tank, and all but two of the cores were so badly silted up I couldn't poke some lockwire down them. No wonder that flushing it made very little difference to it's effectiveness.

I presumed the only way from the inlet pipe to the return pipe was via the core.

[terry paget]

Looking on e-bay, and in Haynes, I see you are right, Nick. What a funny arrangement. Inlet and return pipes are side by side in a tank at one end.
On e-bay there is a selection of used matrices, It seems a risky item to buy used, I might buy another blocked one.There is a new one for £35.99, looks like the one to go for.

[Nick W]

Looking on e-bay, and in Haynes, I see you are right, Nick. What a funny arrangement. Inlet and return pipes are side by side in a tank at one end.
On e-bay there is a selection of used matrices, It seems a risky item to buy used, I might buy another blocked one.There is a new one for £35.99, looks like the one to go for.

A tank on each end uses a lot more space, especially when plumbed in. They still silt up, but don't flow any water so it's obvious.


Traditional brass radiators could be cleaned, but the process should demonstrate why 'flushing' with a hose doesn't do much: remove the end tanks, scrape all the obvious shit out, and poke wire or rod through each part of the core, then resolder the tanks. Which is why the process was also known as rodding. Aluminium radiators with crimped on tanks are not rebuildable, and the core wouldn't take the rodding.




Only an idiot would even look at used heater radiators.

[terry paget]

Thanks for the advice. I imagine there must be a baffle in the tank between the pipes, otherwise there would be no flow at all through the matrix.
A quick search on e-bay finds this matrix 233597754637 at £28.60, and the same item elsewhere at £41.50.also listed elsewhere for the Vectra 2.2 and 3.2 at different prices.

[Doctor Gollum]

Possibility of different parts according to the spec.

All 3.2/2.8 Vectra C have dual zone climate control, most have airconditioning but don't presume that they will all be the same matrix

Three of the four Vectra Cs I owned had different cabin ventilation systems.

Never needed a matrix though as the coolant changes were religious.