Broken heater core, squealing brakes/belts
 

Hey,

I have a 1988 passed on to me from an uncle. It has some serious problems with its doorlocks, but otherwise:

when it heats up (30 minutes of driving or so), antifreeze vapors come through the dashboard (not good for the brain, I hear), and windshield fogs up. We tried using StopLeak, but it didn't seem to do much. The heating and defroster don't work. The antifreeze is pouring out, I think.

There's also a pretty loud squeaking sound when accelerating. It might be the brakes?

Any ideas or comments about this? For such an old car, I'm not sure if it's financially better to junk/sell it, or fix it. Does it sound like it's dying overall, or will fixing these things keep it going? Thanks for any ideas, I'd really love to keep it.

yeah, sounds like the heater core has a hole in it, but just a pinhole. Still need to replace that. also, the squeaking might be the idler pulley (near the A/C compressor) or the power steering pump is low on fluid. They're pretty easy fixes and cheap too. All for less then $100 unless you go to replace the power steering pump. It's $90 by itself. The door locks are buggers to change (the first time), but once you find the trick to it, they're pretty easy to swap out. You'll need a quarter inch pop rivet gun though to mount the new lock solenoid and the door panel is very well screwed on by the armrest. You should probably flush the coolant system when you change the heater core just to make sure you don't plug the new one up. I say might, because sometimes this can release leaks through the freeze plugs that are being plugged with the gunk that would be removed. Though freeze plugs are cheap, getting to the ones on the rear of the engine is a royal pain and the ones on the front require removing the accessory brackets (though after that it's easy).

have fun with the heater core... you gotta undo most of the dash to get to it... unless you cut the box under dash where its located and patch it back up.