Well, I am going to take out the heater core tomorrow. The car has some smell sometimes from it; I think the seal is bad (found info about it in this thread)

http://web.camaross.com/forums/showt...ht=heater+core

My car has no heat for period. When I flushed the heater core a month ago, heater worked well for about 2 weeks, and then back to its "normal" no heat operation. I don't have any access to a garden hose, and I don't have a garage anymore- temporarily live in an apartment complex. Anybody know anything about the seal that seals off the engine fumes, where can I buy it? Any tips to removing the core? I am going to use steam cleaner in a car wash to clean my old heater core, won't run very high pressure though. Any special tools needed. Worst case- another $70 to Autozone, its getting constant money flow from my family's camaros

 

i just replaced mine 2 months ago. It was an autozone unit..but didn't look like for fit like the stock unit did. I didn't have a choice but to use it though... i will be getting a stock replacement from jason cromer this summer when i'm home. The stock ones are the best.

From the "seal", i think you mean the foam pieces? there's one in the firewall that seals around the tubes and also another that goes around the core itself in the HC housing. I haven't found one and don't know where to get it. So.... time to buy some foam **** from Lowe's or Home depot and make some. Probably rediculously priced from a dealer, if they even have them.

They're not hard to remove. Take out the glove box via the 3 or 4 screws on the bottom of the box. Squeeze the sides of the box in to pull it out of the dash. Pull the black panel that hangs flat behind the glovebox. From here you'll see a large black wall looking thing that is round. Theres about 3 or so screws that hold this panel into place... 1/4" or less sized screws. Take that panel off... can be a pain but you can work it out of there. Engine bay time... pull the rubber hoses off the pipes ( i had never had the hoses off before and they were a royal bitch to get off... i ended up cutting them a little bit and sliding them off. Reattached them with screw-type hose clamps). The get back in the passenger floorboard and wrestle that puppy out. This can be aggrivating, but just keep working on it. I found it easiest to rotate the HC counter-clockwise while pulling back and down... you have to clear the black bar that resides just behind where the golve box screws were. Yank that ****er out of there. Then wrestle the new one in there in the same way. The most aggrivating part for me was pushing the rubber hoses back onto the HC pipes since i didn't have anyone around to push against the HC itself. I'm a little leary of putting the housing cover back on and then forcing the hoses on like that since you could damage the pipes or break the housing cover. But once you get those on, button it back up, bleed the cooling system, then test her out.

Whoa... sorry, got a little long winded there. That's what a few drinks do to me. haha

HTHs

 

Now that's a write up Thanks a lot, I am pretty sure it will help to a couple other winter-cold camaro owners. I remember when I had my engine out, I thought about doing it, but now its too late.



Tomas

 

Yeah, great write up man. I'm thinking about doing this sometimes soon, too. Pushing 107,000 miles those little things are starting to happen and the heater core is on the list.

 

No problem, guys, i try to help any one i can. While in my stupor at the time i wrote that ( ), i did forget about that one clip on the pipes from the HC under the hood. It's not hard to get off. The worst thing is reaching under the cowl and fighting the wire harness to reach at the hoses... you'll see what i mean. The black wall thing behind the glove box i was talking about is the housing cover to the heater core. When you take that housing off you wil be looking at the heater core. There will be one small bracket with one screw holding it against the intake frame. From there you'll also notice how your temp control switch works... it controls a baffle which directs the air either straight from the AC core (you see this down the "tunnel" behind the HC) to the cabin (for cooling or vent) or though the HC to the cabin around the "elbow" formed by the housing (for heat... and the temp is controlled by how much of the air is directed through the HC before reaching the cabin). If you have the AC on or the defrost on, the AC core will be chilled so the air is chilled some before reaching the HC. So make sure that housing sits flat against the piece on the firewall before you screw it down or you won't get good heat or air flow to the vents.