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so this past january my water pump seized and my car overheated...luckily no damage was done and $500 later i was back on the road.

a couple months later, in april, car starts overheating again. after i got to work i saw the telltale sign of coolant dripping on my feet. heater core.

now, ive never done one before, but ive heard how much a pain they are to do, the entire car was basically built around the thing. i called my mechanic first, and was quoted $500+ since you have to rip the entire dash out to get to it. at this point i decided id rather remove my own limbs with a butter knife than drop another $500 into a 15 year old car if i am at all able to do it myself.

so i parked the car for awhile and then decided to start ripping the dash out. with the help of a friend, a haynes manual, and a steering wheel puller i got it out in about 10 hours, working casually (this 10 hours was literally spread over about 6 weekends haha).

after i got it out, i looked around and price checked new and used cores. the local junk yard had one for $20, but it was still in a car sitting out in the yard, and it had 210k miles on it. i decided if i did all this work and the "new" core failed i would have no choice but to push the car into the lake by my house, and give it a proper viking funeral. that being said, i called the dealer for my baseline price...which was $330.

screw those knuckleheads. i called around and found one for $170 at advanced auto and began the process of installing it yesterday.

at this point the car had been sitting with no dash in my driveway for about 2 months, so i was a bit worried id forget how it went together, but i was smart enough to individually bag and label all the bolts and nuts for each area of the dash, etc. this proved invaluable, and whatever i forgot, the manual was able to supplement. in about 5 hours of steady working i got it all back together except for a few pieces of the dash fascia, and i still need to go buy new coolant.

hopefully it will run again sometime this week, im anxious and a bit nervous. hopefully the hard work will have paid off, its certainly saved me some dough.

any suggestions on coolant? can i used regular 50/50 ethyl glycol from the parts shop?

thanks for reading i figured id share.

I went through the same thing. I got everything apart, sort of met a girl and decided to marry her and things took a while getting it back together. That was around September of '04. I just got around to putting back together some of the pieces... and have one or 2 to go!!

I labelled and bagged everything... and snapped tons of random pics with a digital. Those were a life saver getting some very important clips and the HVAC back together.

hahaha ok you win.

i did what you said was option one...and bought used...yeah...less than 6 months later I went and redid it. Lets just say the second time around...pulled the car in the garage and had it back out in under 3 hours. bag and label baby, and make sure to mark the little wires that are check hookups and purposely left unclipped.

all you had to do is drop the steering column bolts-no need to pull the steering wheel.

I got a used one, but had it pressure tested by this old school radiator guy that had the large dip tanks and everything. He tested it to 30 psi I think, and I had the old one tested to see where it failed.

I definitely could get it done quickly a second time around if I had to help someone. If I did my car again it would take a while because I would clean EVERYthing and do some sound deadening while I was in there.

yeah...but I already cleaned and did some electrical rewiring the first time around, which was only 6 months prior until the "new" used one broke on me.