Since it is fall break, I took off work and decided to tackle the heater core replacement. I had watched some YouTube videos and felt I knew what I was doing and what to expect. Boy was I wrong.
It was a total fiasco. Many tasks I had to do multiple times, sometimes 3. My father in law helped me a lot.
I will post the pictures and go back and add text soon.
Taking the dash loose.
I failed to take a lot of pictures of certain steps. Uggh.
The original leaky core. It was a nasty, gooey mess in there.
The only picture I took of the new core. I bought it at O’Reilly’s and it doesn’t look anything like the original but it fit. It was all aluminum. If I was smart, I would have ordered the cheapest one from RockAuto as it is a perfect match for the original I removed.
Parts going back in. HVAC box is in and the dash is in place. But wait, it gets good here.
Notice how everything is looking good, right? It wasn’t. I got to the point of installing the lower valence when I realized the transmission control plug wiring was too short. You guessed it. We trapped the wire around a HVAC box stud. The steering column had to be dropped, dash disconnected, washer bottle and charcoal canister removed to get everything out of the way to remove the HVAC nuts to remove the box. Uggh!!!!!!
Once that was done, the wiring was routed correctly and everything looked to fit right.
Upon reassembly, I chose the best parts I had so my colors are a bit wacky.
So then I finally got everything back together with a few goofs. When I dropped the column down the linkage popped apart so the lower valence had to be removed to drop the column to put it back in place.
What a total cluster. And it gets better when I started to deal with the underhood heater control valve and hoses. I broke the original valve and had to cut the hoses. While at O’Reilly’s, I picked up a new valve and molded hose. Yeah, it wasn’t quit molded the same. So fitting the valve was way more of a chore than it should have been.
Here is the molded replacement hose. Yeah, not quite the same.
In the end, I got it plumbed and running and all seems good. Yay!
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