[200q20v] seat heater, inside door handle, auxiliary coolant pump

[Phil Rose]

At 12:39 AM -0500 2/21/01, Brett Dikeman wrote:
>At 12:04 AM -0500 2/21/01, Vztante at aol.com wrote:
>
>>Is this readily available, or a tough one to track down?  It may
>>have been shared with the V8 and earlier 200s, which I would think would make
>>it fairly common.
>
>Yes, the general door panel etc was shared with the earlier 200's 
>and 100's.  Not sure about the  V8.
>
>>The driver's seat heater is not working.  The seller says that "Maybe
>>the connectors are dirty on the switch....." Any experience with seat heater
>>troubleshooting?
>
>The seat element itself usually fails.  It's a lot of effort to fix; 
>you have to partially remove some of the leather to get at the pad, 
>find the break, and re-solder it, then put the leather back.
>
>>
>>It is missing an auxiliary coolant pump.  What is it and should I have it
>>replaced before driving the car the 1200 miles back home?
>
>I find this troublesome.  It circulates coolant around the engine 
>after it has been shut off if temperatures exceed a certain point. 
>The pump is expensive.  Yes, the car is possibly be fine without it; 
>it rarely runs, usually only in the summer...but it does need to run 
>under those circumstances.  However, we're talking about stock 
>200q20v's here...not ones with funky turbo setups and lots of engine 
>performance parts(if memory serves?)
>
>>Trip computer is not working.  Is this a big job...worth fixing?
>
>Hmm, not particularly.  It's more of an amusement.  Check that the 
>radio display works though(if it's the original radio.)  This is 
>incredibly useful and a significant safety feature, at least to me.
>
>Unless you have your heart set on this one(or the price is right), 
>it's beginning to sound more and more like a really...weird...car. 
>I'd err on the side of caution, or at least try to get a really good 
>deal and correct the previous owner's mistakes.
>

Brett's responses here are pretty much spot on. As far as the 
auxiliary pump is concerned, as Brett says, it's not a necessity in 
winter, nor--often-- even with cool summer air temps. Also, it's 
function can be compensated for by always allowing plenty of 
idle-cooldown time before shutting off the engine each time the car 
has been run hard.  But I'd want to try to get an idea about how long 
the pump has been missing. Reason: it's probably prudent to assume 
the PO didn't bother to be so cautious about shutdown procedure. If 
the pump has been gone for a very long while (years?) then the turbo 
bearings have possibly suffered more than their fair share of abuse.

Phil
-- 

Phil Rose
Rochester, NY
mailto:pjrose at frontiernet.net