heater control walve found for gtwe6 (and warious alfettas, spide rs, & montreal)!!!

["Sedon, Doug (OD)" <sedond@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

hi all,

i finally got a heater control valve installed in my '86 gtwe6 that does not
leak!!!  no, it is NOT an alfa part.  after much research, i determined that the
closest match i was going to find was a heater walve from a '79-'82 mazda 626.
well, this thing works well w/only minor mods:

- -the center-to-center mounting holes are ~1/16" bigger.  this was successfully
remedied by drilling the mounting holes out w/a 1/4" bit - still small enuff
holes for the stock nuts/bolts to be used.

- -there is no recess in the mazda walve mount for a rubber o-ring-type gasket.  a
careful application of rtv copper assured a good leak-free installation.  

- -when mounted to the heater core, the inlet for the coolant hose of the factory
walve faces the fire-wall of the car, the mazda walve faces the floor.  at the
wery least, you need to fit longer hose, but i found the kink in the hose at the
valve, due to tite spacing, was not to my liking.  so, i fabricated a copper "u"
tube outta flexible 1/2" copper pipe - the trick is to use a pipe-bender to
achieve the titest possible radius.  hook one end to a short piece of hose to
the walve, the other end to the hose that goes to the engine.

- -the cable operating the walve has to be cut, as the attachment point of the
cable is in a different location.

- -when i hooked up the cable w/the heater control to the "off" position on the
dash, the dash knob now only travels half-way to fully open the walve - the
mazda walve has a shorter arm-travel-motion.  not a problem, but mite offend
someone's aesthetic sensibilities.

- -there is no provision to mount the micro-switch for the 2nd tropicaire fan, if
your car is so equipped.  i was able to mount the micro-switch
w/industrial-strength double-stick tape to a ~1/2" thick shim, w/the shim
double-stick-taped to the side of the hvac center-housing, so the mazda arm
actuates the switch as required.  this was actually wery easy - it took only
about 15 minutes to figure out that 1/2" was the proper shim-size needed, and
where it needed to be mounted to ensure proper activation.

as i haven't seen the configurations of the spiders, alfettas, montreals, etc
that the alfa part is used for, i dunno if the conwersion would be as easy, but
it's worth a shot, when you can only get gnu leaky walves from the factory.
this mazda walve also mite  work where the rite-angle walve is called for, cuz,
from what i can tell, the inlets on these will point down to the floor when
installed anyways.

back on the road w/a heated, leak-free gtwe6!  :>)

dug seed in

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