suggested that as a temporary > solution to my leaking servo I take the 2 water hoses > coming from the motor and splice them together.Is the > heater the only thing which will be affected and will it > not harm anything? This is correct. If you don't have a service manual, you have just reached the point where one will pay foritself with drawings and explanations. This portion of your car is quite mysterious until you see a picture of how it works. After this, you'll have a working knowledge of every heater in every car that I can think of, excepting the late '50s units that came with a gas heater and are rare and noteworthy for that reason. To explain: Your block has 2 hoses for the heater that go from the engine to the firewall, through the Auto Temp Control II Servo, which I call the ATCII. One goes out to the heater from the engine block and one returns the water from the heater into the engine block. This is common to almost all cars. The heater is a miniature radiator that the incoming air gets blown across to yeild hot air in your car's cabin if hot water is flowing through it. Your heater does not work until your engine heats the water in the engine block, and this explains why a heater set to "hot" on a cold engine will only come up to being hot as slowly as the engine warms the water flowing through it. The heater water also goes through a valve. -Most cars, that's a manual slider bar on the dash that you slide or twist to open, with the strength of your hand moving the valve, just like a home sink faucet. The Autotemp is electronic/vacuum operated and is designed with a thermostat so that you set the desired temperature and the unit keeps that temperature, actuating the A/C or heater as needed. One could theoretically drive from Saudi Arabian desert to Siberia without touching any buttons and keep 68 degrees or whatever inside the car at all times that the windows/doors were shut and the motor running. If you decisde to bypass your Auto temp system, you have 4 options. 1. Bypass the ATCII unit only, but reconnect the hoses. You'll have 100% hot air all the time because the hot water from the block can not be turned off as it goes through your heater. 2. Bypass the ATCII and return the hotwater "out" to the hotwater "in" on the block before it gets to the ATCII servo. No hot water flows in the heater ever, and you have no heater. This is viable where I live in California. 3. Bypass the ATCII and replace it with a manual slider switch like regular cars have. A hack (like me) could put it where the ATCII servo is under the hood, neccessitiating that the hood be opened to adjust the heat. Kerry Pinkerton did the slightly tougher, but more elegant method of using a standard early '70's "Chrysler car" (newport? new yorker?) manual heater valve and mounting it to his dash in place of the ATCII control wheel. I seem to remember that the plates were the same cutout size and fit right in, but you'll have to reread Kerry's description to verify that. 4. Pay for a new aluminum bodied ATCII unit. Most seem to agree that junkyard ATCII units are destined to fail, so probably a waste of energy, that. Dive into this. There's nothing that will bite. Make certain that your hose connections are tight. If a hose pops off, all of your radiator coolant will exit that hose, making lots of steam and possibly hurting your engine if you run it when there is no more coolant and the engine overheats, but it's tough to do this unless you are really inattentive to getting your hose clamps tight. This project is a good point at which to replace your radiator hoses, too, if you have not done them in recent memory. They're cheap and a real bummer if they pop due to age. Please write back with any more questions - we are always happy to feild them. ===== Kenyon Wills 6o LeBaron - America's Most Carefully Built Car 73 LeBaron - Long Low & Luxurious __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better http://health.yahoo.com