[s-cars] Heater core done! Comments on write-up's

[ron kirkham]

Like it says, my heater core is finished and blowing hot again. Joy!

I'll give a few comments that were not mentioned in the excellent write-up's
that may help others. YMMV.

1) If you are going to do this repair, do yourself a favor and replace the
heater blower motor at the same time. It will never be easier to do as the
entire box will be on your bench. My blower motor went out in March '10 and
my heater core in April '11, so I got to do alot of this fun work only 1 yr.
apart. I should have done it all the firt time. BTW, when the blower went
the car had 243k mi. on the clock.

2) The short hose with the bleeder screw on it was siezed on my ride ('93
S4). I tried to open it with it off the car and broke the little wheel
completely off. When reassembled, it leaked when the engine was at full
temp. so I ordered a new one and installed it yesterday. I'm not fully
convinced that you couldn't just add a short piece of hose in place of this
and not worry about the bleeder screw? In any case, keep this in mind when
messing with this hose as it is $80 new!

3) The two electrical connections (red & blue) that have to be disconnected
for the box to come out are similar to full-on torture. Easy enough to
disconnect, but brutal to reconnect after installation. The red connection
on the drivers side is the worst. In a small flash of sanity after nearly an
hour of fiddling, I pulled the stereo head unit out and was able to access
this plug through the small opening behind it. One of the problems with
these plugs is that they are mounted on a rubberized attachment to the
heater box. Working in such a tight space with only one hand, it is nearly
impossible to make this connection even if you can get things aligned. The
blue connection (pass. side) was doable from the pass side footwell as the
instructions suggest.

All in, it took me about 5hrs. Although I did have some familiarity with the
area having done the blower motor last year, it is not a fun day in the
garage. Kudos to Kinderutz for doing this in 2.5hrs! I guess if I did it
again, I could shave maybe an hour off, but definitely don't want to do it
again any time soon.

HTH somebody.

Now off to mount the snows!

Ron
'93 S4 249k & with heat again!
'95.5 S6A Needs a good polish and so much more!