If you look over the little round thing on the air cleaner snout, you will see the heater control valve.  You may have to capture the photo and blow it up to see it.

"Retired:  No Job, No Money, No Wife!  Will travel anywhere for Minis"

hockey91dad@hotmail.com

Hmmm....I can't spot the valve for the heater which likely explains why it doesn't seem to do anything.  I do have a 3-way T connector though which I'm guessing should not be there.

Looks like I SHOULD have one of these.  I guess this explains what the mystery cable was for for.  Can anyone provide a picture of how this mounts and where it is plumbed in?

 

Before you do any pounding on the bolt, make sure it turns in place...and leave the front of the tie rod in place on the subframe enetrating oil. Heat, if you need it. Put a box end on the bolt head and get it loose. Then a nut on the bottom of the bolt flush with the end. Then tap with a hammer.

It is likely you'll need to break the bottom ball joint loose to get the bolt up and out, but make sure it is loose first.

Reassemble: Front of the tie rod (with new bushings to the subframe leaving the nut a little loose. (Leave yourself a note that it is loose unless you're sure of your memory!) Tie rod to lower arm. Use a new shouldered bolt and nut or clean the old one up well. Install using a little anitseize. Ball joint next. Torque to 40 lb. ft. Once the car's back on the ground, finish tightening the front tie rod nut.

 

Try tapping on the bottom of the bolt as you wiggle the tie rod a bit.  It should come out the top.  On the heater, the valve that you are trying to open and close is not on the head, nor is it in the heater.  It is a square looking box that resides on the left side of the engine compartment (as viewed from the driver's seat) with a hose on both sides.  I may be broke internally or may have just lost the cable attached to it.  It is easy to pull the hoses off of it and see if it is working properly.

"Retired:  No Job, No Money, No Wife!  Will travel anywhere for Minis"

hockey91dad@hotmail.com

the tie rod has damaged the bolt  it should come out , try a punch and hammer it ,    as for the heater it sounds like the valve on the head is NG ,     mind you having the heater on in the summer prevents it from overheating lol lol

Hey folks,

A couple of questions for the group:

1)  My passenger side tie rod is bent and I want to remove it and straighten.  I was told by a mechanic that I could just remove the front and rear bolts and pull it off.  When I tried, it was easily unbolted at the front subframe but, after removing the nut at the hub side, I was not able to budge the bolt.  Is there some trick to getting this off or perhaps whatever bent the tie rod also deformed the bolt? Advice please?

2)  I've not been able to detect any difference in heater temp output when I push in or pull out the heater control knob.  Are all Minis like this (this is a mid-90s SPI) or does this indicate the valve in my heater core is not working?  Any advice on how to fix?  Now that it is summer, it is annoying that there is always heat radiating off the heater core.

 Thanks folks.  By the way, I asked last winter (before buying my Mini) how they were as daily drivers and received a lot of positive feedback.  I've now been using mine as a DD for about 1.5-2 months and it has been a blast.  I still drive my boring car on ugly weather days (don't want to encourage the Mini rust any more than I have to) but it makes a great around town car.  When I went to polls to vote last week (in the contested NC primary), I purposely parked as far away as I could from one of the women standing out there trying to do some last minute campaigning.  She came running over and I thought, "Great.."  She quickly said, "Hi.  I'm not here to accost you.  I just want to see that little car!"  While she asked me (after I told her the car was a Mini) if this was a "Smart Car", she never said a word about her candidate.

 

-Paul