Is your heater valve control cable well lubed ?
as you may realize, turning up the heat, is pulling on the cable, and the
inner cable slides out of the outer cable easily,
but since they are seldom lubed ( should do it once a year ) ........when
you move the temp lever toward off, the cable is pushed back into the outer
cable..........
after a while it just kinks rather than sliding nicely into the outer cable
housing and turning off the valve completely.

it's also kinda characteristic that it won't quite go from full off to full
off.
Tends to be............ you can have full off, but only 90 % on, or vice
versa.

but obviously, check that the valve is really going to full off.
Since you mentioned which way the coolant flows through the valve, you might
mention what model you're talking about - could be diesel vanagon, 1.9
waterboxer vanagon, 2.1 wbxr, or syncro.  You wouldn't think the heater
hoses could be connected backasswards, but you never know what someone might
have done, not likely their backwards, but since you mentioned
it..............
Scott

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rob Rubin" <robrubin@SBCGLOBAL.NET>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 10:08 PM
Subject: front heater valve

> Hi guys,
>
>
>
> I recently re did my front heater core and blower, the whole deal! I
> replaced everything as it was previously. Here's the problem, I still get
> warm air when the valve is turned off. The rub is that the arrow on the
> valve points in the direction of the engine which I thought odd but that's
> the way it was. I considered that maybe that is the direction of flow and
> maybe it doesn't matter which side of the heater core the valve is on as
> long as it shuts the flow off.
>
>
>
> What am I missing here as I am sure it is operator error!
>
>
>
> Rob