gday all, had a split hose in my cooling system, so went to the radiator place this morning to have it sorted aswell as a flush out of the radiator and block. replaced all cooling / heater hoses, had to do it myself which has now buggered the heater core.also had to drive round the corner to the wreckers to use their hoist and got charged for using their hoist. a $150 quote has turned into a $ 300 job, most i did myself! $289 for the heater core, genuine ford part, not looking forward to replacing it.
my question is : do radiator places take care of the FULL cooling system including hoses / thermostats / radiators, etc, or just the radiators?? or am i just getting old, grumpy & expecting to much froim the radiator place??

any opinons would be great
cheers mick

should do the whole lot - must be lazy sons o's!

thats what i thought.

You'll have to de-gas the a/c to do the heater core.

im not looking forward to it at all cjh. going to cost me around a grand to get the job done but that includes a new air con evaporator, dryer unit, aircon hoses, regas and to fit this bloody heater core.

Sorry to say you got raped. OK price, IF it was including labour, the fact that you did most of the work and hand to find equiptment that they should have carried, really, really Sucks.

My 180sx had a coolant leak under the intake manifold

I took it to a specialist radiator place, they tested it, saw the leak and said they couldn't fix it, WTF. Ended up spending ages doing it myself

thats fkn crap hey paul09, i remember the old days where they would have fixed it for ya.
the $250 i got charged was for a genuine ford thermostat ( so im told ), 3.6 litres of motorcraft coolant which most of it ended up on the ground, a flush of the radiator ( which stayed in the car) and block flush, all the cooling hoses / clamps. i did get raped dc_todd, but learnt a lesson, dont get anything done to ya car in biloela!! rang another radiator place, in gladstone, a 120k drive away, and they said that it wasnt done right and that i shouldnt have touched it. worst part of that call was the price for them to do the job propperly. $175!! a far better price than what i got raped for,but added onto the $250 ive already paid, takes it up to $425!! i reckpn ill have the cleanest cooling system / radiator in Australia. ill almost be able to make a coffee out of the water in the radiator, it will be that clean.
i guess ya live and learn hey

I have not long fixed my a/c in the ED. Had it tested ( free....couldn't believe that ), but I do know the guy....anyway, was found that the evapourator was leaking, soooooo.....out came the dash, change the pedal box while I was there, auto to manual conversion, take out the a/c heater case, pull that apart, clean it out, replace the evapourator ( $145 ), apply new foam seals where applicable ( vents & tubing ), clean the fan & motor, reseal the case, fit 2 new heater hoses ( ones that connect to the heater core pipes ), remove a/c compressor and get resealed ( $358 ), fit the a/c compressor, and new a/c belt, fit 2nd hand electric fan to front of condencer and wire it up with relay so as to come on when the a/c clutch is energized, remove old reciever/dryer, blow out all hoses and lines.
Refill cooling system, with inhibitor. ( had previously cleaned the system prior to all this work )
Take to the a/c shop, supply & fit new TX valve, O'rings, oil, gas, new R/D, and test...4* at the vents.....$385.
As you can see, I did a fair amount of the work....if I dropped it off and said " Fix it "....would've been $2,000 i reckon....easy.