I had a nasty leak coming from the heater core valve, which was shooting coolant onto my ankle by the pedals. After a bit of searching it seems this is a fairly common E30 issue, whether from the core itself, the valve, or one of the pipes. I considered buying a new valve but it's a 300 dollar part and after reading reviews on multiple sites, people state that the brand new part was leaking upon install. I decided to disassemble the valve and found the o-ring to be destroyed. The one in my car is only 2 years old, so there is obviously either some assembly flaw at the factory that makes these, or a poor choice of o-ring material (to me it looks deformed from heat). Next step is to find an appropriately sized, high temp o-ring to replace it with. Unfortunately when I took the valve apart I lost track of the orientation of this part on the inside (pics attached). Can someone explain to me what this piece is, how this valve actually functions, and hopefully tell me which is the correct orientation for this piece when I reassemble it (I labeled the pics Option 1 and 2)? This job was a real pain (literally) because I disassembled the valve while still connected in the car (S52 swap so I would have had to remove the intake manifold to access the heater pipes at the firewall in order to remove the entire thing). The last thing I want is to put this valve back together incorrectly and have it either not function properly or leak. Any help would be appreciated!
Nick
Nick