1953 Chrysler heater trouble.

It's summertime, and my heater is broken. The problem is that it is stuck on! The car is a 1953 Chrysler Windsor. I bought this car at the start of the summer, and the heater has not shut off since then. I took the cover off under the hood, and the cable is hooked up, but I noticed a piece of copper wire attached to the valve. I traced this wire back into the passenger compartment where it was pushed up into the heater vent, but not connected to anything. Does anyone know what this wire is for? I thought it might be a ground wire or something, but I don't know much about heaters. Thanks for any thoughts.

Tom

I posted your question on the P15-D24 website since I have similar problems

http://merc583.addr.com/cgi-bin/webbbs/webbbs_config.pl

and got the following answer:

I think what you are calling a copper wire is the capillary tube for heater control vavle. My 49 Desoto uses this type to control the flow of water through the heater. I found this picture of the heater assembly at the Imperial Online site,if you go there select literature,service manuals and you will see they have one for 1953 Chrysler. The temp control cable on the dash goes to this valve,check to see that it is acually moving when you move the control.