Hi all:

I'd typically never use coolant additives to fix a leak but in this case I'm tempted and would appreciate and "audience survey."

I have a slight leak in my heater core - just enough to get an annoying wiff of coolant odor but not enough to fog up the windshield or leak out the drain hole. Run the blower for a while and you almost forget it's there until the next start up.

But a leak is a leak so I went to Pick & Pull and got a great core for $27. The problem is that in pulling it I realized what a huge project it is and how many chances there are for breaking something and/or messing up the heater control cables, heater hoses, etc. This is not a trivial repair.

I plan to keep this truck till 250K miles or until something major breaks and then perhaps part it out. At that point the engine is not going to be worth a lot so having a small amount of stop leak in the system for another year or so may not be a big deal - or is it?

This would be a good week for me to basically disassemble my truck if I'm going to do it - but it's so tempting to just use half a bottle of additive and see what happens. If any of you have strong feelings, horror stories, etc with stop leak products I'd appreciate hearing.

Thanks in advance,

Ron