Suzuki SX 4 with a coolant leak

This Suzuki SX 4 came in due to coolant loss and a damp carpet in the front foot well.

After checking the coolant level and various pipes for leakages and not able to locate anything obvious, we looked at the interior of the car and found that the heater core behind the dashboard has failed causing the coolant to leak onto the carpets.

A heater core is a radiator-like device used in heating the cabin of a vehicle. Hot coolant from the vehicle's engine is passed through a winding tube of the core, a heat exchanger between coolant and cabin air.

When a heater matrix is made part of the vehicle heating system, the heated coolant passes through it, and the cabin temperature is controlled by a valve that limits the amount of coolant passing through the heater core. This allows you to put your internal heaters on to defrost and demist the car and in turn heats the internal cabin of the car.

To replace the heater core is a complex and intensive labour job.

To access the heater core most of the cars interior has to be removed. We removed as much as we access and after the technician spending hours working up-side-down on his back he managed to remove the heater matrix.

As we did not want to redo this time consuming job it was decided to use a Suzuki genuine part. The part was fitted and we started to rebuild up the interior. We filled the coolant tank with fresh antifreeze and bleed it through the heating system.

All is working perfectly and amazingly we had no nuts, bolts and fixings left behind (we had removed over 300 items)