My engine fan died earlier this week and I'm waiting on the new fan to arrive. Order cheap, wait much, amirite? In the mean time I've been rolling down the windows and cranking the heater if I get into any low speed situation, and it's been working well. Until today...

At a red light, the car was warmer than normal, but not too hot yet. what is normal? Normally my needle is Just below center on the temp dial, so lets call it needle at 48% of its total travel. Red starts at about 90% of travel. The needle in this case was at about 70% of travel. So I was worried. Then BAM!! loud quick noise!! Coolant pours onto the passenger floorboards and steam fills the cabin!! It was quite exciting. No steam outside the cabin. Not that I could see anyway, but my glasses were pretty foggy. There was no hissing, or sounds associated with a small hole and slow depressurizing. The engine runs fine, I pull through the intersection into a parking lot and shut her down. There she still sits. Sweating and tired.

My initial thought was a hose popped off the heater core. However I just watched a video on replacing the heater core, and it appears that its closer to the drivers side on this model. Is that correct? Is it only some models the heater core is on that side? Does anybody have a clue what part/hose might have failed? I was hoping to just bypass the heater core so I could drive it to the house, but now I'm not so sure that's an option. :/

 

two considerations - why would the temperature rise up in the first place? that could have been caused by a failed thermostat, water pump, fan or it was low on coolant. Has it gone above normal temp prior? The second thought is that once your engine started to overheat, it built up pressure and popped (off) the hose to the heater core, or the core itself split open. You'd need to open up the center console to have a look around to see if you need a new core or core + hoses. More importantly you need to find out why it over-heated in the first place.

 

Why it overheated is no mystery, as my first sentence states my engine fan died earlier this week. Still waiting on that to come in.

My main question is where is the heater core? Is the heater core on the passenger side in this vehicle? As noted above a video I just watched indicates in on the driver side. I'm not really wanting to tear into the dash in a parking lot just to discover I can't apply a quick bypass to get it back home.

 

In warm weather, a heater blower fan will never remove the heat from the engine.

It sounds to me like you blew the side off the heater core. What a mess!

 

Sorry for an inconclusive answer but every drawing or video of heater core replacement showed access to the core on the driver's side.

 

Just an update in case anyone comes across this thread in future. The heater core is essentially right behind the center console, and accessed via the driver side. The passenger side of the heater core blew out, which led me to believe the heater core was on the passenger side. Long story short, theres nothing special about this car and the resources you find online with people accessing the heater core from the driver side is normal.

 

Here's RobertDIY's vid on this topic