Removing the Heater - Coolant Shut Off Valve?

[thesantoros]

Hi all! Bought a 2007 Freightliner FS65 (MBE904) last week and all the seats are out! While my wife started taking the wall paneling / insulation today, I started working on the heater. The coolant lines run internal to the bus on the floor in a metal channel. I wasn’t able to get the whole channel off just yet, there’s still one pesky screw that I couldn’t back out and didn’t have the space to angle grind off.

Regardless, I’ve read that some heaters have a shut off valve under the hood... (excuse my ignorance if not, but...) is that what I’m looking at in the picture below? Excuse the bad angle, on the left hand side you can see what looks to me like a standard garden hose shut off valve.

Better yet...where would I go to find this sort of info? I looked through the owners manual but I didn’t find anything that was helpful here.

[thesantoros]

Ah looks like the picture flipped. The bottom would be “left”

[thesantoros]

I circled the valve handle here

[bachataBus]

My coolant lines did have a couple of shutoff valves (one for outgoing, one for incoming, 1997 International). However, the best way to know is to just trace the lines from the heater.

Originally Posted by thesantoros

The coolant lines run internal to the bus on the floor in a metal channel. I wasn’t able to get the whole channel off just yet, there’s still one pesky screw that I couldn’t back out and didn’t have the space to angle grind off.

Is this what is preventing you from tracing the lines? Any way to jiggle the lines to see where they go?

[thesantoros]

Originally Posted by bachataBus

My coolant lines did have a couple of shutoff valves (one for outgoing, one for incoming, 1997 International). However, the best way to know is to just trace the lines from the heater.



Is this what is preventing you from tracing the lines? Any way to jiggle the lines to see where they go?

Yeah, that’s what’s preventing me from tracing the lines internally right now. Hoping to get it off next time we’re out working on it.

[Native]

Originally Posted by thesantoros

Yeah, that’s what’s preventing me from tracing the lines internally right now. Hoping to get it off next time we’re out working on it.

Can you put a notch in the screw head with a cut-off disk on an angle grinder?


Or, can you get a pair of vice grips on it?


If you are not planning on keeping the cover, use a crow bar on it.

[bachataBus]

Originally Posted by Native

Can you put a notch in the screw head with a cut-off disk on an angle grinder?


Or, can you get a pair of vice grips on it?


If you are not planning on keeping the cover, use a crow bar on it.

Second the crow bar. You gotta break some eggs right? Also, I meant to say earlier, I did have shutoff valves, but mine looked different, so I can't say for sure what you're lookin at. Mine were ball valves.

[Johnny Mullet]

Why remove the heater? I love my heaters!

[bachataBus]

Originally Posted by Johnny Mullet

Why remove the heater? I love my heaters!

I removed the heater (in favor a diesel heater) so that I could have something that would run while I wasn't driving, which the coolant based heaters obviously don't do. It's more of a house now, and less of a truck for children!

[cadillackid]

you will wantthose heaters if you do drive in the winter at all.. at least the front ones.. not likely the rear ones would you need but having the front driver and door-side heaters is a must in cold weather unless you wenjoy being bundled up in several layers scraping the inside of your glass while the tiny diesel heater laughs...


seems counter productive to burn fuel while driving to make heat that the engine will be expelling out the radiator..