Our Repair of the Month is based on a Ram 5500 that came in with a heating issue. The customer explained that his heat was not working as efficiently as it used to and was only getting lukewarm. Another thing the customer noticed was that the heat on the passenger side seemed to be blowing warmer than on the driver's side. Based on previous experiences, we immediately knew that this was likely to be an issue with the vehicle's heater core. 
The heater core is a part of the vehicle's cooling system that is responsible for heating the cabin when you turn the heat on. It is almost always located between the dashboard and the firewall, making the removal of the dashboard necessary to replace it. The evaporative core, part of the air conditioning system, can also be found behind the dashboard. This customer wanted to take preventative measures and replace the evaporator core too while everything was taken apart. There was no extra labor charge for this because the evaporative core needs to be removed to get to the heater core.
When you turn your heat on, a valve that sends hot coolant to the heater core opens. As the hot coolant runs through the core, the air surrounding it warms up. Then it gets pushed out of your vents, warming up the inside of your car. Problems begin to arise when coolant can no longer flow through the core freely. Disrupted flow is usually caused by a clog but can be caused by a coolant leak in some cases.
In this case, the heater core in this Ram was clogged, resulting in a weak ability to warm up a cold cabin. If the issue is caught soon enough, the clog may be able to get flushed out of the system to restore heat. However, this doesn’t always do the trick and it becomes necessary to replace the heater core to fix the issue the proper way.
We were able to help this customer fix this issue by removing the dashboard and other necessary components to replace the heater and evaporative cores. After replacement, the truck had strong heat and was ready to keep its crew warm. We also performed a coolant fluid exchange to clear any contaminants that may have been present in the old coolant. Contaminants in the cooling system can be a large contributor to the core clogging. This is no slight task and a lengthy process, and we would like to acknowledge our awesome technician Jay, who was able to complete this job quickly to get this work truck back to work! If you think your heater core might need some attention in this cold weather, let us know! We’re happy to help!
Rom 3-2024