I knew my car before I owned it and one winter I was riding with the previous owner when I mentioned that I thought the heat wasn't very hot. His response? "It's a Camaro, it's not supposed to have good heat." I knew he was full of crap but it was his car, so I didn't care. Well, years later, I own it, and with winter approaching, I decided to do something about the luke warm heat. Especially after driving my Caprice and getting blasted with heat after only a few minutes of highway driving (which has 206k and a thermostat 15* colder than factory, when my Camaro has 150k and a factory thermostat).

So I reverse flushed it this weekend. Drained the radiator a suitable amount then disconnected the heater core hoses at the water pump. I rigged up a fitting from a garden hose to the hoses so I wouldn't have to press them together, and ran water back and forth maybe 5 times. Buttoned everything up, topped off coolant, bled, etc and guess what - NICE heat. And for minimal cost. Don't live with poor heat! Flush today!

 

Yeah, I have had bad heat in mine for the past few years and just dealt with it. This weekend though, with a set of new heater hoses I went to it and flushed my heater core as well. A bunch of crap came out when I back flushed, so that is a good sign. Unfortunately, I didn't get to test it out because I wasn't able to change my old heater hoses. The reason that was a problem was because I must have damaged the outlet hose taking it off the water pump because when I put it back on the water pump and started cycling coolant through the system the hose started spraying all over the water pump. I didn't have the right tools with me at home (a Torx socket) to change out the heater hoses. I left my Torx socket set at school this weekend and all the stores were closed (Sunday night). So I ended up leaving the car at home and taking my mom's car back to school. Kinda sucked, but I'll hopefully finish it off next weekend.

Kinda wierd, but it kinda looks like the pump could be leaking at the J-bent outlet heater hose pipe instead of being the hose leaking. I didn't have a whole lot of time to investigate it. I'll probably get the new heater hoses on this weekend and see what it does. I won't be very happy if the water pump is leaking.

 

Maybe you installed the clamp wrong? It should go below where the end of the pipe on the WP is flared. Fortunately, my car has had the WP replaced like 25k ago, so my heater hoses came off with hardly any effort.

 

Yes, it was under the enlarged end of the pipe and was clamped securely. I even tried to reposition the clamp, but to no avail.

Nevertheless, I installed the new hoses this weekend. What a job that was. It was tough getting the old hoses out. I could have chopped them up and got them out a lot easier but I wanted to make sure that I could get the new hoses in there. I ended up taking out the alternator to give me more room to work. After a few long hours I got it out. It only took a little over an hour to put the new one in. It was definately a hard, frustrating job. If I would have taken off the power steering pump and the power steering/alternator bracket it would have been much easier. I didn't want to remove the power steering pump because I didn't want to have to bleed the power steering system. In order to get the bracket off (which was what was really in the way) I would have to take off the power steering pump. But it is done finally. And I do have better heat. It's probably not as good as factory (160 deg. thermostat) but it is a lot better than it was.

Oh, and I recant my statement above that it takes a T-50 Torx socket... It is actually a T-40 Torx socket.