heater core

[monte70car]

Well we hooked up monte420's heater core no leaks while sitting in the garage. She made it to Sear's and its leaking inside the car. A bottle of stop leak hasn't sealed the leak spots. What are we looking at to change the heater core on a a/c car.

[Grease]

Robert , not sure of pricing for a core . Is it an A/C car ? Thats a little more wrk I think . The heater core as best I remember comes out from the inside A/C or not .

[kc8oye]

it's pretty easy ert

 

pull the dash pad

pull all the duct work, including the 'octopus'

remove the 4 nuts on the outside that hold the suitcase to the firewall (the suitcase will stay there, there are other screws holding it)

remove the screws on the inside holding the box to the firewall, and pull the box towards you.. I like to remove the AC temp control cable as it does tend to break fairly easily, plus it gives you a lot more freedom to move the box around

with a bit of twisting and turning you can lay it on it's back on the floor and remove the 4 screws holding the heater core in.

then reverse it all

 

oops I forgot to say remove the heater hoses, but that should be fairly obvious.

[DavidTX]

It would be a good idea to replace seals, gaskets etc. such as

http://www.opgi.com/product.asp?Prodcode=CH17468&grpcode=6574&topcatid=147

I am sure they are available elsewhere also. I was surprised as my all brass heater core was less than $30.00 at auto zone. It really isn't that much more work to pull the entire dash. You can check and replace bulbs etc while there. It makes it much easier to pull the AC/heater box.

[kc8oye]

it isn't that much more work to pull the entire dash!?!?!

 

that's like saying it's not much more work to change your header gaskets by pulling the entire engine out of the car...

[DavidTX]

How long does it take you to drop the steering wheel (two screws, one bolt and disconnect the string for the shift indicator), 4 more screws for the AC vents, disconnecting the speedometer cable, 7 bolts holding in the dash, and best to remove the radio (two nuts, one bolt and disconnect wires). You do have several wire connectors to disconnect. I can do that definately in an hour and probably 30 minutes.

[monte70car]

I could probably drop the dash in 30 minutes if I had to. As for the radio its in dash cd player so its just a matter of unplugging it and then leave the a/c heat control panel in the car. Undoing the speedo is the fun part but I wouldn't have to deal with all the wires behind the cluster just the cluster plug head light switch would stay either in the car or on the dash, so many ways to go with that one.

[LuckyKenny]

Quick question relating to this....

 

Yesterday i was vaccuming out the ppassengers side

 

I noticed some small drips of oily antifreeze

 

It looks like it's been doing this for quite some time.

 

We're talking about a table spoon and a half at the very least

 

Heater still works, guessing the hoses are going bad?

[monte70car]

What we tired to do was seal the holes with stop leak. Sitting in the drive running most of it had stop, we had streams and a few drips. timed the drips at 22.5seconds between drips so it was slowly working. Kenny if its leaking in the car you have a hole in the core black pepper or a bottle of stop leak will work until you replace the core. Monte420's replacement core should be here this week, then roughly an hour and half for the swap. When we do the swap I will try and do a write up with pictures. Again we are working with a small block 71 factory air car which has had the suit case and air items removed and the plastic or fiber cover put on. Currently her fan only works on high is there any way to fix it so it blows on low low-med med med-high and high?

[LuckyKenny]

Mines factory air, it's all original excluding drive train

[DavidTX]

A trick I learned with the speedo cable car is to get a wooden paint stirrer. Cut out a half circle at the bottom of the stick and it works great to push the cable back onto the speedometer. Don't remember if the clips holding it on are pointed up or down. If up you could use it to release the cable also.

[kc8oye]

i still don't see the risk of cracking the dash worth the tiny little bit of effort it saves. I've changed a heater core in an a/c car before with the dash in place, it's not difficult.

[LuckyKenny]

Now this was a MC?

 

It's just a couple of tubes, a box and 8 bolts right?

[monte70car]

Just finish replacing monte420's heater core took just about 2 hours. All that held hers in place was the four studs as someone already took out all the bolts on the inside.