What Are You Doing To/With Your Car Today?
The dreaded heater core replacement on my trusty old '78 D-300 440 dually! Can we all say, "Oh, noooo!!!" together?
The heater core began to leak last summer, and I tried to convince myself that I didn't really need a heater after I read the heater core replacement procedure in the factory service manual. But it only took one winter to make me a believer in car heaters. Going without the heater was one thing, but not having any windshield defrost is what convinced me to fix it. It's a pretty terrible job. It had been leaking for awhile, and 7 of the 22 screws holding the two halves of the heater box together had rusted so badly that you couldn't get a socket or a vise grip on them, so I had to buy a Dremel tool to cut those screws. Of course they don't give you enough cutting wheels with the Dremel, so you have to buy the Dremel accessory kit, too, in order to get more cutting wheels. Since I had it all apart, I fixed everything else on the dash that didn't work.
I had to have the old heater core rebuilt because the heater core for a '72-'80 Dodge pickup is NLA. Although the rebuilt heater core should be of much better quality than a Chinesium one, it was expensive.
I sure hope I remember how all this goes back together.
The dreaded heater core replacement on my trusty old '78 D-300 440 dually! Can we all say, "Oh, noooo!!!" together?
The heater core began to leak last summer, and I tried to convince myself that I didn't really need a heater after I read the heater core replacement procedure in the factory service manual. But it only took one winter to make me a believer in car heaters. Going without the heater was one thing, but not having any windshield defrost is what convinced me to fix it. It's a pretty terrible job. It had been leaking for awhile, and 7 of the 22 screws holding the two halves of the heater box together had rusted so badly that you couldn't get a socket or a vise grip on them, so I had to buy a Dremel tool to cut those screws. Of course they don't give you enough cutting wheels with the Dremel, so you have to buy the Dremel accessory kit, too, in order to get more cutting wheels. Since I had it all apart, I fixed everything else on the dash that didn't work.
I had to have the old heater core rebuilt because the heater core for a '72-'80 Dodge pickup is NLA. Although the rebuilt heater core should be of much better quality than a Chinesium one, it was expensive.
I sure hope I remember how all this goes back together.
