I have an 01 Mercury Cougar Sport Coupe that we bought from a friend for not too much, just to use as a daily driver. It’s got a lot of miles on it, but it still gets good mileage, which combined with the fact that we didn’t pay much for it makes it an okay car for around town.
Here’s the problem. I live in Wyoming where it’s winter nine months out of the year, and the heater core is apparently blocked. I made it all through last winter with this problem, but now it’s intolerable. The kids call the car “the Red Icicle”. My mechanic diagnosed the problem as a blocked heater core and tells me the only solution is to replace it, which costs something like $500. I can’t work on the car as everything is too jammed under the hood to get access to anything.
Do I really need to replace the heater core? The whole car isn’t worth much. Is there something I can put in the cooling system that will unblock the core reliably?