Heater Core Replacement
 

It is my honest belief that engineers sit around and toast each other on how difficult it is to swap out a heater core.

Car is a ‘92 Mustang with A/C, it took a solid 7 hours from start to finish. My daughter is happy to have her car back.

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Just as bad for a Boxster. Had it done and it lasted one year. This was the evaporator. Same idea.

Seen some Of new cars on reddit.
R&R doors and the kitchen sink. Those techs have my sympathy.

I turn them away now a days . I hate , hate , hate dash work . I used to do a ton of them .
Back in the 90's , the Ford Tarus was the hard one. I used to tear em up, and make bank.
Now, I cannot stand laying under a dash trying to turn those little 7 mm bolt heads.

I used to work in a radiator shop. We had one guy that all he did was replace heater cores. I remember some of the prayers he used to say to himself. It took all day to take out and put back in. Did hundreds of them.

I wish someone would bring back a contemporary air cooled car. It doesn’t have to have 300 HP Never have to think about coolant changes, water pump failures and certainly not replacing a heater core.

That is kind of how I got started in the biz. I rented my first commercial shop space from a radiator shop.
There was all the heater core, or difficult cooling system repair work there , that I could ever ask for . Head gaskets, water pumps, heater cores, etc... They were really only interested in selling ,and repairing radiators , and easy labor jobs.
Anything difficult , was sitting right there at my fingertips , ripe for the taking.
Now, at 50 years old, I have little desire to spend an 8 hour day all balled up under someones dashboard, finding every french fry, they ever lost,

Yep, my 911 has never needed a new water pump, heater core, ABS, Power steering, or Tire pressure monitoring repair. ;)

On my El Camino the heater core is a couple of hours for me, the worlds slowest mechanic. It is right there in the engine compartment and no crawling under the dad needed.

Heater core repair. The stuff of my nightmares.

But you have to pull the inner fender ..... I think, its been a while

The worst was the almost 30 year old plastic wiring harness connectors everywhere. I really really really did not want to break any of them and have weird electrical gremlins once I got it all back together.

But yeah, that job sucked. A coupe of my fingers are beat up.

Nope, just remove the fan motor on top (three screws and two minutes.) Then the screws all around the perimeter of the air box that is in the engine compartment.

I bet the "book" rate is under an hour total. I allays make it harder, but moving the AC evaporator out as well, and cleaning in there real thoroughly. Then spending even more time getting everything sealed up real well.

The fender liner is not in the way at all.

I had a 2003 Passat - same drill: remove the entire dash to get at the heater core.

while the engines last longer than ever, it is the sensors and electrical components that don't age well.

Two days on a gs300 Lexus, then a dealer guy tells me they used to just cut a hole in the fire wall to get to them!

I need to get off my ars and replace the heater core in my Trans Am GTA

Heater cores are what nightmares are made of. I have a second gen S10. I built the 350SBC, the 4L60E and did the gears and locker in the rear end. When the heater core goes I may just sell it. I have seen where it is but have no idea how to get it out.:(

Ha ha. Couple years ago I had a class C RV, built on an '84 Chevy Van chassis. Took me 6 hours to take it apart, and another 6 to reassemble. For what, a thirty or forty dollar part? All the hidden fasteners that you can't see, but won't allow you to disassemble so.ething unless they're undone. The brittle electrical connectors. The extra bits and bobs (and fasteners) that the RV manufacturer adds on. I wound up watching You Tube videos for advice whenever I'd get stuck. But the only videos I found were one made by some hillbilly (who deleted the exact part of the process where I was stuck) and another by a Mexican guy (in Spanish), because who else fixes heater cores on 30+ year-old vans?

A Fox body Mustang! A 5.0, by any chance? I beat the snot out of one at the racetrack back in the day. The heater core was the only thing I didn't do to that car.

I've replaced several heater cores over the years... It's always "difficult" but a good torque adjustable electric screw driver is invaluable.
That and a compartmentalised tray for the screws and clips. Keeping them grouped and in order helps a lot.

I own a 1992 400SE - W140 and fingers crossed I never have to change that one! (The heater cores are notorious for failing)

This is my VW Golf VR6 from a few years ago. Awful job...

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"My dad has an awesome set of tools. He can fix anything!"

Peter it appears as if you have installed the steering column on the wrong side;)

Ummm... Maybe I flipped the photo ;)

Actually the heater core is a RHD only part so it's more expensive than the LHD version... :rolleyes:

Yep a 5.0, fun little car.

I used zip lock bags and a sharpie to write down where each set of fasteners came from.

Glad to see others find it a hateful job as well...

I had a mechanic tell me they hang a heatercore from a string and then build the car around it.

It’s is crazy how easy the core comes out after you get to it huh?

I had a Ford van I bought in '89 that eventually needed a heater core replaced. I was dreading it but lucked out. The heater core turned out to be located in the kick panel on the passenger side under the dash. Once that was removed, replacing it was easy. Another good thing at the time was the old core was cheaply made out of aluminum. The replacement from the parts store was a quality brass core.

I paid to have it done..and am still making payments.

And it doesn't need to be this way. The full sized fords of the 70s were under the hood and only a couple of screws to remove and they were out!

They're an easy swap on a Silver Shadow! :confused:

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I had enough problem replacing a heater hose, never mind the heater core, on my Reliant Scimitar GT. Four and a half hours of torment,caused by inaccessibility of hose clips,worrying that I would actually finish the job in time to use the car for work the next day.

On several cars I've owned over the years, I simply used Barr's StopLeak when the heater core began leaking. I followed the directions to a T and it worked fine. At least one or two of them were semi-beaters.

Once when one of them began leaking again a coupla years later (I think it was my semi-beater '84 Ford LTD II), I just disconnected the heater hoses from the core, made a bypass loop, and used the car for several years without a heater. It was only a 4-5 mile trip to work. It was a piece of cake to wear enough of a coat to stay warm for that distance in the morning here in SC.

I opened the vents and cracked the windows if the windshield began to fog up.

When the A/C went out and I got an $800 estimate to fix it, same approach. It was cool enough on summer mornings to make that 4-5 miles and in the afternoons, it was all windows down... no problem. That thing has cloth seats, which helped... it was an ex-sheriff's investigator's car... 5.0 Litre.

That's water from a wash job... not a busted radiator. :D

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The evaporator in a 996 aint any fun either...ask me how I know.

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All those pics of dashboards entirely disassembled are giving me flashbacks.

I will admit to doing the heater core on an '85 Mustang GT convertible once. Did the radiator and had to put a long block in it too.

Just remembered a heater core story. A lot of snow on the ground and more coming down. I'm in my C3 Vette, headed for Chicago. 100 miles from home and 200 miles to go and the windshield fogs. I remembered a story someone told me. I stopped at the first convenience store and put a can of black pepper in the radiator. It stopped the leak. I did replace the core a couple years later, just in case. No idea how long it would have gone.