winter in ohio thermostat

[rfisch]

Well to anyone that read my last post, Thanks for all of the help. I finally got enough buddies to help push it into the garage and am going to get started on figuring out that last problem this evening. My next move is going to be a new intake and carb and while I'm at it I plan on replacing my heater hoses as well. They don't leak (yet) but they are in pretty bad shape so why not. When the car was running good, the heater still wouldn't blow hot air. The core is new, the core housing is shot, but it runs about $180 the best that I can find so I'm trying to hold off on replacing that. I stuffed the cracks in it to try to teporarily seal it but it still has alot of air coming through it. The engine overheated easily this past summer when I first got the car so I put in a new radiator (more fins/inch and all that good stuff), now I have no temp problems in the summer but now that winter has come the temp gauge on the cluster only shows that it gets about an 1/8 of the way to hot now instead of about half way. I'm thinking the core just may not be getting warm enough to heat the cold outside air as it comes thru it. It feels like the air is just barely warmer than the outside air when it comes out of the defroster (I'm getting plenty of air coming out of it though). The thermostat that I have in now is rated at 180 if I remember right. Does anyone have any suggestions so that I would be able to defrost at least a little bit of my windshield on these 10 degree Ohio days. If I had the money I would just move but I cant even see thru my windshield to start driving south (lol)! I've read the similar post that is already on here but haven't read anything that would help my situation. Thanks for any input.