Well, tonight was a productive night, and I have a heck of a back ache to prove it, but all good. The evening started off with the removal of the evaporator box from the smuggler's box. Removal was fairly straight forward using Griff's instructions on angling the box towards the driver's side for ease of removal. Biggest challenge as highlighted was the drain tube protruding from the base, and the rusty hose clamps on the air outlet to the box. The fabric air tube was pretty well disintegrated / torn as well, but managed to remove that at the same time and cleaned off the hose clamps ready for reinstall. Once out, the amount of crap that I found at the bottom wasn't as bad as I was expecting - no dead mice.
I vacuumed it all out, and wiped it down and started to work on the evaporator and motor replacement I had planned. Upon opening, it was no wonder the AC didn't ever work while I owned the car.
Again, I cleaned off all the parts using light soapy water for the plastic parts so as not to ruin them, and then began work on replacing the motor. Wasn't difficult at all, and before I knew it, the motor & squirrel cage were balanced and reassembled with the new Kuehl Wirbelsturm.
Then it was time to shift to the new evaporator and drilling of a new hole for the thermostatic tube, again, took my time and followed the instructions to the letter.
Once the box was prepped, the base got reinstalled in the smuggler's box with insulating foam for the driver's side air intake followed by the insertion of the tin tube that accompanied the kit and then I pulled through the wiring for the fan from the new circuit control board in the passenger side footwell area (still haven't fed the thermostatic tube through, but that'll be next).
Inserted the evaporator, and placed the cover on, reattaching the cover using the new self-tapping screws vice the clips, attached the new hose, and wired up the red/black (although it looked red/brown to me) wire from the control board to the new evaporator fan connector. Guess I just leave the old harness in place, as I'm not sure where that one goes.
I then cleaned up the area cause tomorrow is supposed to be decent weather, and the car needs to move.
As I said, the next step, tomorrow or Friday, will be to feed the thermostatic tube from the console to the evaporator and tidy up all the cables / wires, then it'll be onto the front condenser blower fan replacement I think, but will have to read the next pages of instructions again to make sure my order is right. That's it for tonight. Thanks for the supportive words.