Full Circle:
Amazon Warehouse deals are the best. I bought this heater core for my 2008 A4 for 6$. The website said it was slightly damaged, but for 6$, I couldn’t pass it up. As you can see, the inlet and outlet were both damaged because of inadequate packaging. Oh well, for a 90% discount, I’ll take this challenge.
To fix the damage, I had to look back on a high school shop class experience. I recall turning a flat piece of aluminum into a bowl using a lathe and friction, this process is called metal spinning. I figured that if I reversed the process and spun a correctly sized object in the hole, I could heat and reform my damaged heater core.
Well, it worked. I turned a piece of scrap Delrin on a lathe to fit the ID of the heater core ports. I then used a drill to spin the Delrin into the ports, the heat from friction and pressure was enough to stretch and reform the aluminum. Like new for 6$.
