General heater matrix

[5461todd]

I have read a posting on here regarding a similar problem to my own. Last year I had a drip inside the cab from the heater matrix spilling antifreeze on the cab floor. No sooner had it started but in a week it had stopped and never to be seen again... until last week when it poured out relentlessly and continues to do so. The local fiat dealer says its a dashboard out job taking 2 days plus parts and it will cost up to £2000. I have now found a local garage who will put in a new heater matrix and do the job in a day, well under the fiat dealers costings. We thought it would be possible to exclude the heater system from the vehicle and bypass the affected leak but no one has been able to do this so the big job must be done. Is this common to the ducato as we're thinking of buying another new one but at 2yrs old this is a costly out of warranty repair. However the vehicle has covered over 97k miles and is faultless apart from an idler gear type rattle, so may be tempted to have another.

 

[Old-Boy racer]

This does seem to be a common problem on these vehicles having read several questions about it on this and other forums. It is a big job, I looked at replacing the matrix on my 1994 Citroen ( basically the same vehicle apart from the engine ) and the dash has to come out ! I don't reckon it would be two days though evn if you ahdn't done it before. I ended up just putting Radweld in it to see if it would stop leaking which It did, problem solved for a couple of quid. Things may be different on newer ones. I have a 2004 Ducato but haven't looked to see if it's the same heater matrix, I suspect not.
I don't see why you couldn't have just by-passed the old heater but then you really do need a heater in this country (UK).