Balnking the heating circuit

[voucht]

Hi,
When I built my car, I bypassed the heating circuit, normally used to heat the inside of the car, with a loop: the water is just circulating in a hose running around the engine.
But as my engine bay is quite crowded, and I never found, in spite of many tries, the perfect route for the bypass hose, I'm thinking about just blanking the in and out ports of the heating circuit on the engine, with blanking plugs.
I have a Sierra 2.0i DOHC. the heating circuit runs from the water pump to the thermostat housing.
Will this be a problem? Does the heating circuit need to circulate, or can it be just blanked with no issue on the cooling system?
Thanks in advance for your advices.

[Numplumb]

Hi on the MX5 engine if you was to just blank off the connections you would have a problem with the circulation, but I don't know about a ford engine.
Regards Mick.

[jason 82]

Your engine will overheat if you just blank off the heater system. I know this from experience with one of my other projects. It's a royal pain in the butt I know.

[voucht]

Thank you very much for the answers guys.
Yes, it looks like there is going to be issues, even though, it depends on how the cooling/heating systems are originally set up on the engine, it is not always the same.
But I will keep the heating circuit bypassed, I just have to find a better route for this hoses.
Thanks.

[alga]

On my Zetec I blanked the heating loop, but there is a separate thermostat bypass hose runnig from the stat housing to the water pump. The thermostat housing has 3 outlets: the 32 mm upper rad hose, the 19 mm bypass hose, and the 19 mm towards heating. I have the heating port blocked off. If your thermostat has any kind of a bypass besides the heating loop, you can try blocking it off and seeing if that works. https://photos.app.goo.gl/kGMB25gAX8mZYHdH6