The ole “bypass your heater core in your workplace parking lot with a hollowed expo marker trick”

Ever pull into your workplace and think “Huh, it smells like antifreeze in here” after you park?  Well that would be your heater core going bad.  

All vehicles have a heater core in the cab.  Essentially the coolant is circulated through the heater core and is used to heat the air which is then used to keep you warm, yay! 

Well when the heater core goes out it tends to leak coolant into the cab and that’s what happenend to me this morning.

There are two hoses going to the heater core, an inlet and and outlet.  If you connect those two hoses together you can bypass the heater core and fix your leak.  Only thing is the heater won’t work in your car now.  

In my case in order to make it back home to plug the heater hoses until I can fix the heater core I had to do an emergency bypass…

Turns out after looking around my office I found some of my personal Expo markers for the dry erase board.  Well those happen to be about the right size diameter to make a connector for my two hoses.

Pull out the trusty Leatherman and saw both ends off and dump the ink cartridge out.  Use it to connect the two hoses and use the hose clamps that where already on the heater hoses to clamp each end down on the Expo marker shell and voila emergency heater core bypass complete.  

Will update with pictures later when I can snap some.  Until then keep tinkering and don’t forget to think outside the box!