I recently noticed that my cabin heat wasn’t working. After a quick inspection, I realized the control arm on the heater valve had broken off of the flapper valve. The valve is a stainless steel unit from Plane Innovations which I upgraded to because I wanted to keep all steel components on the firewall. I emailed the company about the best way to repair the valve and they rushed out a new one free of charge. I wish more companies had this kind of customer service.
Unfortunately, getting the old valve out requires pulling a substantial amount of the interior out. The heater valve is behind the tunnel cover which is under the fuel pump cover. The fuel pump cover sits under the forward seat pans, so the seats and carpets need to be removed.
My son helped me remove the nuts holding on the heater valve. This is one of the few items that regrettably I didn’t attach to the firewall with nutplates. It would have made replacing it far easier. Unfortunately, adding nutplates now is virtually impossible, so we just bolted the new one on the same way.
Here’s the failed heater valve. The spot welds simply failed due to the high vibration around the firewall. The new valve has five spot welds instead of four, but I’m not optimistic this will prevent this from happening again.
