heater
 

The heat in my alero isn't working very good anymore.
blower works good just takes a long time to heat up, twice as long as before, what could cause this.

Stuck open thermostat most likely.

Yaya! That or air in the cooling system. Open your bleeder and you'll figure it out quick enough .

Where is the bleeder and how do i replace the thermostat, do I have to remove the exhaust pipe that goes across the housing, how does that come off then ?

I changed the cap on the recovery tank while i was on it because it was real weak and might have been letting air in.

I got the air filter housing off but couldn't get a wrench to fit onto the lower thermo housing bolt, my wrench was too thick.
started to take off the manifold across the housing but could only get two front manifold cover bolts out the back two were rusted bad and I just know from looking at the rusty manifold bolts that they were going to brake so i stopped right there and put it all back together, ran out of time tonight.

Are there any tips you guys can give me?

Omg I did one at the shop the other day. NIGHTMARE.

You can get both bolts on the housing usually.. I used a boxend non-ratcheting wrench for the bottom one... had to use a prybar to pry it up to loosen the bolt. Huuuuuge pain in the ass.

From there sometimes you can sneak it out.. best bet is to takeoff the heat shield otherwise. Just destroy it if you want, I would on my car, lol.

Good luck soldier.

thanks for the reply, do you mean if i take the heat shield off it's easier to get the thermostat housing off ?

It looked like the whole manifold pipe needed to come off.

I sure don't want to risk breaking the bolts off on the exhaust manifold.

why would i want to leave the heat shield off, any advantage to that?

Yea, usually if you remove the heat shield you'll get just enough room to sneak the housing out.

And I'd leave it off just for the sake of being lazy... You're welcome to spend the few extra minutes to put it back on your car though.

do both bolts have to be removed or can one just be loosened

Take the throttle body off its much easer and more room. Thats what i do

thanks, i'm diving into it this evening and wanted to get all the info i could before i get it apart.

took off the heat shield still couldn't get to bottom bolt , took off the exhaust pipe and it was easy then and only broke off one exhaust bolt. knew it was going to happen even after soaking the bolts with penetrating oil.
what a pain !

changed the thermostat and bled the air out ,seems to be working good for now, time will tell.

Also for anyone who might need to know in the future, the bottom bolt does not have to come out, the housing is notched out.
But I found it way easy to just remove the exhaust cross over pipe, but broken bolts are likely :(