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Evaporator and Heater Core Heads Up

weebur

NAXJA Forum User
After trying everything under the sun to avoid replacing my evaporator and heater core I finally decided to bite the bullet and do it (after a $1,400+ quote from a local dealer). Everything went fine, thanks in part to posts on this and other forums, the FSM and Alldata.

After putting the dash/steering wheel/column back in I noticed that my instrument cluster would go out under any heavy load (cigar lighter, rear defogger, etc). I could get it working again by jiggling the ignition key. I replaced the switch...no help.

After spending a day and a half troubleshooting everything electrical...and I mean everything I found the cause. I usually tell anyone who will listen that when working with DC always go to your grounds first. I assumed that the dash was grounded through the center support, which was tight...wrong. I replaced the negative battery cable, which I was thinking about doing anyway and saw that the problem was still there but not quite as bad.

What the problem turned out to be was the fact that I did not tighten the bolts at the lower corners of the dash, thinking that I might have to pull the dash out again if I had problems. While touching one of the bolts I noticed the console lights flicker, they were glowing dimly and shouldn’t have even been on. I tightened the bolts and saw that the console lights went off and then turned on everything to load up the system and found that everything worked perfectly.

I hope this helps prevent someone from going through the hassle I went through.
 
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