How to get your heater shutoff working properly in a VN-VS Commodore

[savage1987]

There's a switch (more of a valve) that sits up near your left foot while driving that not many people seem to know exists...this valve is responsible for shutting off the coolant flow through the heater core when full cold position is selected on the temperature dial.

Most of us will have had to adjust the threaded rod and connector controlling the heater tap at some stage for one reason or another, I've had to do it several times on a few different cars. I never knew this small vaccuum valve existed until quite recently.



The valve I'm referring to is the black mechanism in that (blurry) photo. As you turn the temp dial around to the cold mark the threaded rod pulls that big white lever towards the left of that photo (pictured as far left as it'll go) and operates the valve, shutting off coolant flow to the core and letting all the piping behind the dash there cool down properly.


My problem was that even when at its limit, the white plastic lever wouldn't press the valve. Here's what solved it for me:

1. Loosen 2 screws holding valve block
2. Disconnect threaded rod from white plastic lever
3. Move lever as far toward the valve as it'll go
4. Play with the adjustment in the screw holes (that you loosened in step 1) to try to get the lever to operate the switch properly
5. If you get it to work fine then you're done, tighten screws again, connect the threaded rod back up in the right place and you're done

Otherwise, if it's like mine and just wouldn't reach...

6. Remove switch/valve altogether and elongate the screw holes (I used a drill) to allow more adjustment.
7. Trial and error refit until working



Bit of a hurried writeup, more than happy to answer any questions that I can though!!

Sam

[SWE11L]

Is this the same for climate control?

[Adds_05]

nope,they use a different system

[savage1987]

wow haha I forgot I wrote this