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Ohh you are in luck my friend...well not really. You are in luck that I took my entire car apart over the winter and the heater core was one of the things I removed so I can tell you how to do it. However, it is a pain in the ass and its alot of work. There are two ways to do it. The heater core is in a plastci housing, you can attempt to get it out while just removing the top of the housing and leaving the base installed in the car, or you can remove the whole housing, bring the housing outside the car, change the heater core and put the complete housing back in. The upside to leaving the housing in the car is that you dont have to disconnect, drain and recharge the A/C system, the downside is that its harder to do with it in the car. If you opt to take the entire housing out, you need to take your car to an A/C shop and have them drain the system. The refrigerant in the A/C system is extemely harmful to the environment and to humans if inhaled, so the shop has a special machine that drains it into a high pressure storage tank. I have only done this by removing the entire heater core housing, so thats how im going to explain it to you. You can improvise if you want to do it the other way.
Before you do anything, disconnect the battery and wait an hour for all capacitors in the car to drain. Remember this, any completely yellow wiring or connectors behind the dash is for the airbags, take extra special care when working with these wires. Also, airbags can be deployed by discharging static electricity around them, verfy unlikely but possible, so maybe you want to wear gloves of some sort to do this and dont where your Adidas swooshy jogging pants as those things love static electricity.
So here goes, this is how I did it, you might be able to leave a few parts still in tact but I took them out for more working space. First thing, remove the passenger side seat. Then remove the center console, there are bolts at the bottom inside the arm rest compartment and 2 more behind the ash tray. Once that is out, remove the radio bezel and lower dash. The lower dash is easy to remove, just find all the bolts and take it off. Next remove the blower motor assembly. This is located under the passenger side dash. Note, you want to take out all the large bolts so that you remove it as a complete assembly, if you take out the little phillips head screws, your gonna remove it in pieces which is more trouble than its worth. Now that you have the Blower motor out, this would be an ideal time to contact the dealer and get a new in-cabin air filter, its located at the top part of the blower motor and takes 2 minutes to change with the blower motor out of the car. Now comes one of the fun parts, taking out the upper dash. First start by removing both "A" pillars, these are the ones that run along the outside edge of the windshield, but inside the car. Next, remove the gauge cluster bezel. There are 2 phillips head bolts in the top of it, once that is out, remove the cluster itself, there are 2 phillips screws on each side of it. slide it out gently and remove the wiring connectors that go to it. Next remove the upper dash, there is one bolt behind the gauge cluster on the bottom, I believe 2 behind the radio bezel and one or 2 on each end behind the fuse box cover and behind the cover on the passenger side. Be sure that you remove all parts slowly and check for any wiring that is connected to the parts and disconnect it as needed. Oops, I almost forgot the PITA part, this wont be too hard if you have little hands, I dont have little hands so there you go. The passenger side airbag door needs to be removed to get the upper dash out. There are 4 bolts that hold this on, but they are in a tight spot. There is one on each end and 2 on the back side of the airbag housing. Im pretty sure they are 12mm bolts and this is easiest done with an small open end wrench or if you have it, a closed end ratchet action wrench. Once the airbag door is removed the dash will slide right off and out.
Congrats, your almost half way done. Now, behind the dash and the radio bezel there is a thin metal frame that houses the radio and heater controls, take this out. There is a bunch of wiring run all around this thing, my advice, do what I did, take pictures of this thing from every angle and save them so you know how the wiring goes when you put it back together. This part is held in by 10mm bolts, two on each side at the bottom and3 or 4 in the center at the top. here is a tip, the wiring that is connected to this thing is held in with cable ties that have a a locking piece that slides into the holes on the frame. Use a pair of needle nose pliers to depress the locking clip and slide them out without damaging them so you can reinstall them easily later on. Now for the fun part, the main dash bar. its that giant bar that looks like a sideways piece of fence post, you dont have to fully remove it, but my best advice is to have a helper for this part as that bar is heavy. There are 3, 14mm bolts that thold this in at the top near the bottom of the windshield over the steering column and 1 long bolt at each end of the bar. Before you loosen the bar, remove the nuts that hold the heater core housing into place, Im pretty sure there was 4 or 5 of them, all 12mm.
Now, go and pop the hood, you need to remove the two coolant lines that you see going into your firewall, when you remove them, those two barb fittings you see are apart of the heeater core, remember these, because when your trying to slide the heater core out, they are gonna hit and get stuck on every single piece of wire hanging behind the dash. Next, once you have the shop drain the A/C system, remove the A/C line that bolts into the wirewall, behind that is a rectangular block with a allen head bolt through it, that is the A/C expansion valve, remove it and keep it in clean place for later reinstallation.
Ok, now go and get your helper. remove the bolts that hold in the main dash support bar, have your helper lift the bar up as much as possible to give you enough room to slide the heater core out. Be careful as to how much he moves the bar, pay special attention not to rip or pull any of the wiring that is on that bar. REMEMBER, the heater core is FULL OF COOLANT, you might want to plug up those two barb fittings so that when your trying to get it out that your not spilling coolant all over your carpet. It is not going to come out willingly, put a little muscle into it and rock it back and forth and you want to slide it out the passenger side, since the driver side is more cluttered with the pedals and steering column. Once its out, set it aside and put the two end bolts back in the bar just to hold it in place so it doesnt fall and break stuff.
At this point, remove the screws that hold the housing together on top and remove the heater core and replace it. Put it back in the reverse order of the instructions I have just given you. If you have all the tools needed which isnt much and some mechanical ability this will take you a full day to complete. Service manuals allow either 5 or 6 labor hours for a shop to do this, I cant remember off hand, but I dont even thing that is enough honestly. I have a pretty good mechnical skills and it took me and Bryant (Xska55) a while to do this.
Once you put it all back together, have the A/C recharged and top off your coolant system for the coolant you lost in the heater core. I hope all this helps, im going to ice my sore fingers from typing all of this. I checked for pics, I dont have any more or else I would have thrown them up for some reference. Trust me, take pics while your doing it.
Originally Posted by qnz
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