Heater core leak

[Chexi]

Well... was out yesterday and noticed some warm water at my feet. Thanks to the great PN brain and my past review of other people's posts, I knew immediately that it was in all likelihood a cracked heater coil. Sure enough, it was. I don't know what would have done it in the middle of the summer (maybe hit one big wave to many), but it happened. Fortunately, I happened to have a nipple in the boat, a razor knife, and a screw driver along with some wakeboarding gloves (to keep the 160 water from burning me while I fixed it). Took about 30 minutes and kind of sucked, but at least I was fortunate enough to have what I needed to fix it and keep going. Probably won't bother replacing the heater since I'm in Texas and only use it a few days out of the year. We'll see.

[ag4ever]

You can replace just the core.

There are some screws on the end of the heater assembly, the the end panel comes off. The core slides right out and you can slide a new one in. The part is about $30 from AutoZone (part number is Modine Model Number 702273). You do need some weather stripping to wrap around the core and isolate it from the heater assembly. The weather striping is 1/4" thick and 1-1/4" wide.

[Chexi]

You can replace just the core.

There are some screws on the end of the heater assembly, the the end panel comes off. The core slides right out and you can slide a new one in. The part is about $30 from AutoZone (part number is Modine Model Number 702273). You do need some weather stripping to wrap around the core and isolate it from the heater assembly. The weather striping is 1/4" thick and 1-1/4" wide.

Wow, thanks. For that kind of money, it is worth fixing.

[Chexi]

Picked one up. Price was right on. I do have a small snag in that on the one I picked up from Autozone, the water inlet and outlet pipes are slightly closer together than the original and also a little more toward the center. I'm going to have to shave off about a 1/4" of metal in the housing and on the bracket to get this to work. Otherwise, it looks identical. I might have just gotten lucky and gotten one that is slightly out of spec.