The heatercore on my friends 86 Z is starting to leak,how much of a pain is it to change?

 

getting the dash completely off!!! the entire center console!! after that its not bad also reapplying the hoses in the engine bay onto the core is a bitch,, if you have patience go for it,, i paid somebody 300 bucks to do it i have no patience

 

Do a search here and thirdgen.org this has been covered many times, and there are alot of shortcuts from others who have done this.

 

$300 is a bit much but understandable. i think i paid around $40 for the replacement piece from napa, pull my center console and front carpet up and swapped it out from under the dash. not the easiest thing but i took my time and had it done in about an hour.

 

Its fairly easy Ive done mine in 45 minutes before. There are alot of short cuts check thirdgen.org

 

I've done 2 so far and it is easier the second time with my body arched like a flexi-straw lol.
I removed the top dash and speaker to allow a flashlight to shine down. Removed the lower kick panel and worked with another flashlight and a 1/4 inch or 7mm nut driver with a flex extension or small wrench, it's definitely space limited in there. Have a razor blade handy to cut the stubborn hoses off and channel locks to pull the sucker out carefully.May have to cover your carpet with a bunch of towels to capture the residual coolant. Hope you ordered 2 replacement hoses and their respective clamps to shove the new one in so you can cut down on the downtime. Several cold beers on standby when you reach the end of the fight would be recommended.

Any updates on your heater core experience?

 

Figured I'd bump this to the top just as an FYI since I didn't see too many other threads about it.

I just replaced the one in my 92 RS and it was a fairly simple job. The thirdgen.org article is spot on really.
Notes to add-
My 92 is the 3.1 WITH air. I started by taking the dash and passenger kick panel off. The outer housing for the core is fairly easy to remove save for one bolt on the right (towards passenger side) and the top one. Lucky for me, someone must have already replaced mine once and the top screw was gone. That would be the biggest hurdle to completing this job if you ask me because I'm not sure if I could've even gotten it without taking off the ducts and nearly everything on top of the dash.

After that, getting the core out is pretty easy. I'd recommend having a buddy there though to help you guide the new hoses in when you're installing the new one.

Something else to note- no need to drain all your coolant. Simply undo the hoses and clamp them off. My uncle and I also just went ahead and blew air into the heater core from one hose (while it was still in) and it blew out the excess coolant through the other one, pretty much negating any mess in the interior (though I still recommend towels for an errant drop or two.)

All in all, me being a backyard mechanic (oil changes, spark plugs, brakes and other easy items), it took about 4 hours taking my time. I could easily see some other people getting it done in an hour (I haven't worked on a car in over a year sadly.) I do recommend doing it yourself though if you have the time. I paid only $43 for the new core. Much better than paying somebody else to do it.

 

i laugh when this subject come up. the hardest thing for me is getting the top screw out of the box and with a flexi-stension makes it cake.

i can do them in an hr. a friend that works at a shop gets me to do the ones in his birds and he said the book calls for 6 hrs, after i got done i slid out and said "ok, what do they do with the other 5 hrs?"

a friend of mine was doing his on his 85 IROC and said "WTEFF is up with this heater cor crap. i cant get to it" he had the dash apart on both sides along with the dash pad. i told him to step away from the screwdriver and i'll be over inna min.

spent more time putting everything back together he pulled apart than we did doing the core.