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[Jimbob]

How to flush your heater matrix.

This can cure the cabin taking a long time to heat up, or just getting luke warm.

It will not fix any underlying issues, just a quick fix to clean out / unblock the matrix.


1, Get the hosepipe out, and also a short offcut of hose (this is to ensure the flushed water drains under the car, and doesn't soak the engine bay.




2, Remove the quick release hoses where they enter the bulkhead.
(This guide may help http://www.omegaowners.com/forum/index.php?topic=90557.0 )

3, Attach the offcut to one pipe, and direct it to drain under the car.
Hosepipe does fit, but is a tight fit, so if yours won't stretch over the pipe, soak it in hot water for a minute to soften it.

4, Attach the hose to the other and run the hose for a good few minutes.


(you can see the green hose from the tap, and the yellow draining away)

5, Swap the hoses and flush in the other direction.

6, Reattach the coolant hoses, and put the hosepipe away.

7, Run the car up to temperature and hope for a good improvement, You may have introduced air into the system, so you could also leave the heaters on HI, with the coolant tank cap off to help release any airlocks, squeezing any hoses may also help.

8, Enjoy your (hopefully) toasty warm car.

[MV6Driver]

There was no difference between the air coming in to either side of the car. Also, I could feel the pipes leading to and from the matrix were hot, from the engine compartment side.

I decided to go for it and flush the matrix. Afterwards, I couldn't believe how hot it was! With the setting on 'HI' I cannot hold my hand against the vent for more than five seconds. Since I had a camera to hand, I took some pictures. I've posted them below.


Firstly, I had to remove the wipers and scuttle, as shown here:
http://www.omegaowners.com/forum/index.php?topic=111517.0


Then I followed Jimbob's maintenance guide for flushing the matrix, as shown here:
http://www.omegaowners.com/forum/index.php?topic=90620.0


The heater hoses look like this when they're attached and locked - you can see a coloured band:



When the outer sleeve is pulled back, it's unlocked and can be twisted and pulled away from the matrix metal pipes (I had to wrap it with a cloth to get a better grip):



There's not much space to get your hand in to twist and pull the hoses. I ended up with a few bruises.

To answer my own question, a tiny amount of coolant leaked out after pulling the top hose (less than 20ml), and no more than 100ml leaked out from the bottom hose.


Attaching a standard garden hose was the biggest and most time-consuming part of the whole exercise. Even with the ends softened with near-boiling water, it still took me about two hours to do this. One problem may have been that I was trying to do this with a stone-cold engine. As the matrix pipes were cold, the hose seemed to lose its flexibility as soon as I brought them together. If I was doing this again, I might try it with a warm (NOT HOT) engine. Anyway, here's what I ended up with:



As I'd read that I'd have to flush in both directions, I rigged up Hoselok connectors to make the job easier:



This is the pressure I set the water to for the first flush (basically to test the strength of the hose connections to the matrix pipes). I increased it once I was happy everything was going to hold together:



Here's the muck that was flushed out at the beginning of the first flush:



After about two minutes, the water ran clear. I then swapped the flushing direction. I continued to do this swapping-and-flushing about a dozen times. This picture shows the initial water quality after the eighth swap:



Once it flushed clean in both directions, I put everything back together. Job done!