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OK, I turned on the gas heater in the wagon, and she works. I can feel warm air after about 30-45 seconds, but then I get smoke coming out of the vents...Not good! I need to get a manual that covers these heaters in details, but until then, anybody have any ideas about what to check?

This problem is caused by one of two things. Either you have or had...leaking valves covers or PR tubes. The rush of air carries oil up into the outer chamber where it coats the sidea and burns off. The fix....is to remove the unit...take all of the parts off....and being careful of the asbestos/viberglass mantel in the burner chamber.....submerge it in a hot fast drying solvent like Acetone or MEK.
Now...this may take the paint off. Just get some good high temp iant for it. I covered up the info plate with silicone ...like permatex...so it would not take off the paint from that.

If the smoke smells like gasloine...you have a leaking 0-ring between the burner blower bezel and teh heater body. Or at very worst ....and this is exceedingly rare...you have a rust through from the inner chamber (doubt it). Ray

hi huber look in my old post ,, i geeve the name of the very good expert for the gaz heather ,, ask at this guy it is very smart guy and all the time he geeve me good honest service ,,at my oppignion , you have exhoust leak on the gaz heather exhoust and the blower for the fresh air on the gaz heather make suction of this exhoust , and shoot that inside,, 2,or the double wall inside the gaz heather have leak ,,if you have chance for to rent ,,gaz leak detector ,,with that you can see were is the exhoust leak is ,, albert

Thanks for the advice guys, I'll check everything. Looks like I'll be intimately familiar with the underside of this car in no time...

I took the car on a bit longer drive and caused the transaxle leak to reassert itself, dang! When I got home, smoke was billowing out from under the car- I thought it was going to catch fire! Really, though, it was just ATF on the hot engine and I assume that when I was stopped or going slow, it was getting sucked into the heater. The heater works great. Now to try to seal up that trans...somebody spent a bunch o'money last November according to a receipt that came with the car getting new seals put in by "professionals." That's why I try to do most everything myself- at least my shoddy work is free...and I learn something in the process. First up, I guess, is to get a new torque wrench with a smaller scale, something that I can feel comfortable will be accurate to 7lb/ft to check the pan bolts.

Glad to hear it's not going to catch fire!

When you do the seals, try if at all possible to do all of them, two in the diff housing area (one on each end of the pinion shaft, one goes in the diff case at the end next to the trans, the other is hidden up behind the pinion shaft), one at the torque converter (the one that's easy to get at), the two halfshaft seals on the left and right sides of the case, and the governor shaft seal (up inside the diff housing), that's 6 seals in total. Once you've done that, no more seals to mess with for a long time, also keeps the ATF and the EP lube from meeting (and destroying the AT/diff). I found the "brown Bentley" Type 3 manual's AT section to be the most helpful, though if you get into the valve body, watch out for the different number and placement of check balls shown...it's T3 specific, T4's have one in a different spot.

Yeah, glad no fire just smokin! Hey can you test for leaks by pressure testing from the fill pipe or do you need the fluid to build up in the torque converter?? Can you see where it might be leaking? Could it be in the module?? bill

I don't know, I'll have to see...

Working on the AT was far easier than I thought when I started working on it. It's really a simple design, and (unless the parts have dried up in the past 6 months), you can still get a rebuild kit for it. I'd say a few days of intense concentration, and it'd be done, at least that's what it took me to do the trans back in April. The seals only take a few hours tops.