One of the greatest challenges in watercooling is finding a suitable radiator that wont break the bank, yet still perform well. A traditional solution is to pull a heatercore from a car. Unfortunately this has been a hit and miss affair until now. With the range of cars available people don't know what to look for. Many heater cores are hidden behind acres of plastic which takes hours to pull away from the car.

The first thing to do is to get yourself and your extensive toolkit to the nearest car breakers yard.

The bare minimum toolkit is a Hammer, Junior hacksaw, Phillips screwdriver, and a small pair of pliers.

Upon arriving at the car breakers you will be confronted by quite a confusing sight, row upon row of clapped out old bangers. But not any banger will do, we are looking for the holy grail, an old shape Volkswagen Polo. These cars are fairly common and most modest sized breakers should have at least one. The reason the Polo is such a good find is that the heatercore isn't buried under god knows what inside the cabin and is also a fairly large densely finned core, perfect for computer watercooling!

Now, a car breakers wont take any responsibility for any injuries caused while on the premises, so it is best to locate a Polo that is on the ground rather than stacked (like the one I had to dissect). Now onto the actual surgery itself!

Here is the most delicate part of the whole process, hacking through the two rubber hoses connected to the heatercore. It is extremely quick to do this part, I was through each pipe in about 5 seconds! Next there is a blue cable running back into the cabin. Take your pliers/sidecutters and use the cutter part to neatly snip off the cable, or if you feel that a more elegant solution suits your character its a simple task to unclip it from the heatercore valve. Now the fun bit, take your "Fine Adjustment Device" (AKA hammer) and tap the locking clips towards the outside edges of the heater assembly. A few gentle persuasive blows and the clips ping gratifyingly around the engine bay (make sure your eyes are protected for this stage).

Once the second clip goes flying, you just need to pull off any wires still attached and start pulling the whole assembly out. There may well be a few more bits and bobs on the polo you choose, but its a simple task to clear a way out! Now you have two options, take the lot as it is with an integral 12 volt blower, or go on to the next and final stage. This again features my best buddy Mr F.A.D.

To get at the heatercore itself you need to crack open the casing. Simply take the F.A.D. and whack at the little clips. Soon half the casing will come away. The other half is secured via a pair of screws to the heatercore, unscrew these and you have the bare heatercore.

This is the fruits of your labours! A few minutes spent cleaning it up, and then a thorough flushing with clean water and you are ready for action! I suggest building a simple duct rather than directly mounting the fans onto it (It is perfectly sized for a pair of 120 mm case fans) as this will cause less restriction to airflow. A word of warning: this heatercore is made solely from aluminium, therefore if used in conjunction with a copper waterblock its best to use distilled water and antifreeze to help prevent galvanic corrosion.

I hope this has been of some use, and cleared up some of the mystery in acquiring a heatercore.

Thanks go to Spode for a lot of help in pulling various cars to bits in search of the (almost) perfect heatercore.