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Is
there a sweet smell coming out of your vents when the heater
is on? Do you mysteriously loose engine coolant only
during the winter months? Is there a slimy buildup on
the inside of your windows? If you answered yes to any
of these questions it probably means that your heater core
is leaking. Its not an easy task to replace this but
it can be done in one day with some basic hand tools.
I took a few pictures while I was in the process of replacing
mine. I will offer some commentary and hopefully give
you an idea of what to expect when replacing yours.
This
first picture is with the dash completely removed. This
part is pretty easy actually. The lower parts of the
dash come off with some screws and some 10mm bolts.
The center console needs to be loosened to get the center
area trim pieces out. After that the defrost vents on
top of the dash pop out easily and there are screws underneath
them that hold the dash in place. I removed the stereo,
the ECU, also unhook the ventilation control wires from the
white plastic box in the middle.
Once
that is done you need to take the brace that goes across the
car out of the way. It will swing over to the passenger
side with the climate control panel still in place.
With the 2 vent control wires removed that are on the drivers
side. The one cable that goes over to the passenger
side can stay in place.
Now you are there! The white box in the middle there
needs to come out, but wait!! Before you do unhook the
heater lines in the engine compartment that are directly behind
the cylinder head. Once those are off you can remove
the bolts on the inside that hold the heater core box to the
firewall, these are more 10mm bolts. Almost everything
for this job is either 10mm or Phillips head screws.
There are a few 12's and the steering column is held on with
17's I think. The picture has the heater core
still in place to show how it sits in there at an angle.
Here
is the backside of the heater and ventilation box, this is
the side that faces the firewall. Mine had antifreeze
all in the bottom of it so I cleaned it all out before re-installing
it. And that's pretty much it, just put everything back the
way it came out. When you clip the control cables back
onto their proper location you might want to test them for
full range of operation, I got one a little off and the vent
selector didn't function properly, but if it goes all the
way from one side to the other than you got it right.
All
in all I think the job took about 5 or 6 hours and was not
hard at all and required very little tools. The heater
core itself was about $50 from AutoZone. You might also
want to stick some adhesive weather-stripping around the outside
edges similar to how the original heater core was wrapped.
This will keep it from rattling around inside the housing
and that the air that you want heated goes through the core
instead of around it.
Any
questions or comments should be adressed to wjh@ufl.edu
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