75 Heater Tap

[Mat Francis]

Dunno if this crapola will benefit anyone or if i'm just using up Evan's space, but with the cars getting older and original bits harder to find it might be useful down the track.

The problem with the tap on the 75's is that they do not use the readily available in-line one like the GTV6's. I could have got another original one, but not at a price that appealed, and ultimately it would be a temporary fix.

Here is the solution that took Hugh about 5 minutes to explain to us, and about 4 days for dad and i to make work.

First thing was to make the bend to attach to the heater core, where the original tap bolted on. I got a 15mm copper piece from Bunnings, and then dad drilled out the holes in a piece of steel to mate to the core using the mill. Main hole and then a bigger one around it to accomodate the seal. We used the one out of the original tap, but an o ring would work if this was rooted.

Next we took it all to a friend's place, where he silver soldered the two bits together.

Once this was all sorted we discovered we weren't going to fit it back under the dash, as the new tap was too big. I know for a fact it has been done before (using the same tap i did), and hats off the mechanic that did it. Not a half bad effort. We ended up cutting the line under the air filter assembly, as it was easy to install and cleared all the other hoses/cables/etc.

To make it work with the original controls in the dash i found some old outer cable from the push bike days. We then went down to the local mower shop and got a couple of meters of throttle cable (didn't need it all, but at our house we need to allow for stuff ups), which fit nicely in the outer and is very stiff. Again, not hard to do, just very fiddly and time consuming to make it work.

Had to make a joiner to get the tap to fit into the line (i think it was just old and deformed). Did this buy getting another copper fitting from bunnings and putting it in the lathe. The picture is what it was before taking metal off it. Probably wouldn't need to do this if i had bothered to replace the whole hose.

So far it works a treat. Fingers crossed for roadworthy tomorrow.