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MKIII Heater core DIY:

190K views 201 replies 99 participants last post by  Techguru57 
#1 ·
all right here goes my write up on the heatercore replacement theres a few out there but another cant hurt my car is a 97 gti VR6. I also used the VEMEO replacement from MJM for 34.99
(also thanks to xxxxx who did a write up i didnt want to type everything back out so i used yours sorta )
we will start with the outside first heres go
1. gotta start with liquid to get you through this horrible job

2. Disconnect both rain ducts(covering ecu, and window wiper blade). Each side has about 3 plastic screws.Also take the wipers off
3. Unbolt 2 bolts, one next to the ecu, 10mm nut; and the other right behind the window wiper blade motor, 10mm nut. They aren’t connected to anything,


4. unbolt all little bolts that are behind the flaps on the firewall cover, also there are 2 bolts that are holding the a/c service controls to the firewall, remove those as well. Unbolt 3 13mm bolts from the firewall behind the firewall cover, the one on the left is almost behind the shock tower, kinda hard to get too.




Thats pretty much it for the outside of the car bolts no onto the dreaded inside

Heres a picture take out every screw marked in pink

1.pull off every plastic cover on the dash, as well as take all vents out, also open glove box and remove the 3 screws inside.
2. Unbolt steering wheel nut with 24mm bolt, take off steering wheel, unbolt all sensors attached to steering wheel/airbag.
4. unbolt steering wheel top and bottom plastic cover, 2 bolts from underneath.
5. Then lean the cluster forward and disconnect both harnesses from behind, then take out.
6. Unbolt passenger kick panel( 5 screws from underneath), then pry off slowly(3 clips on top).
7. Take out bolts for airbag cover, 3 or 4 underneath, the slide to the right and pull out.
8. disconnect passenger airbag sensor from behind; take off 4 allen bolts from airbag assembly, 2 on each side. Pull out airbag. )Optional i did not remove my airbag as you can see)
9. remove the center console including unbolting the e-brake. two hidden screws by the rear ash tray/cup holder. Disconnect electronic hatch switch. Then pull up and unscrew handbrake, 2 bolts. Then move out of the way.
10. take off shift knob and boot, unbolt 2 plastic nuts. And then unbolt another plastic nut at the end towards the e-brake.

11. pull out cupholder/console assembly.
12. take out metal cover behind cupholder, around 7-8 holts, 10mm

13. Take off driver kickpanel, 5 bolts underneath, then pull off.
14. unbolt all bolts that hold dash to the rebar, should be around 8-10.
15. unhook all wires that are hooked up to the dash wire clips.
16. Take out dash slowly, and move out of place.
17. unbolt vent right behind rebar, 2 10mm plastic nuts, then unclip from the bottom, and pull up.
18. unbolt vent on top of heatercore housing, 1 screw
19. unbolt footwell vent from the bottom, 1 screw right behind rebar.
20. unbolt 6 clips that hold the heatercore/evap housing together, 2 behind, 2 front, 1 top, 1 bottom, rears are hard to get too, need small screwdriver to unclip those from the back.
21. pull apart heatercore housing from evap housing
22. unbolt the rightside and leftside dash rebar, 2 torx bolts from the outside doorwell

23.Now break out the drill and some bits your gonna have to drill out 2 shear blots that hold the steeering colum to the rebar. once those are drilled out right behind the ingnition swith are 2 -10mm nuts on a bracket holding rebar to firewall take those off. Now you can move reabar out of the way for easy removal of heatercore with no fighting
----replace shear bolts with #8 bolts at 1.25 pitch cost aboust 1.50 at the most

24. pull off the vacuum hose that’s on the heatercore
25. unscrew the heatercore if yours have screws, mine only had 1 holding it up.
26. unbolt a harness that plugs into the heatercore housing, its almost next to the gas pedal , just sits a bit higher to the right.
27. pull back heatercore as far as possible, you will have to use a lot of force to get the heatercore out, just play with it, and make sure you don’t brake anything. .
28. Pull out heatercore by sliding upward, should come out easy.
29. Disconnect the plugs from the heater box and remove from car i did this so i could wash the box out and clean it up.

30. Now replace your foam in the box since its probably gone or soaked.I went to Michaels and bought a .99 peice of foam to recover the blend doors ( i choose green to match my car
) i cleaned off all the old foam and used spray adhesive to attach new foam to the front and back of the blend doors and a little bit of silicone around the edges to make sure it was good and permenant.

This is where i stopped and let the foam sit over nite. At this point i have about 5 hours into the job but i stopped for dinner and to play with my 10 month old so really maybe 3 hours (first time doing the job, but i have replaced dashboards before if that helps)
Evening number 2
is spent puting everything back together just follow the instruction as you took it apart, All the electrical plugs only plug into one thing so you cant screw it up
1st thing i did was put new heater core in ,now my heater core replacement came with plastic cover on the bottom and Foam around the outside. the new one did not fit with the plastic cover on it and the foam got ripped while sliding the new one in so i just ripped it off.
and thats it for replacing it if you got this far awesome not you get to put it all back just take your time and have a beer.

Oh and i spent maybe 4 hours the 2nd night but at leaset an hour of that was trying to figure out where a plug went ( white one that attaches to the ac/heat controls ) and while looking at it pounding quite a few beers so progress slowed down


Modified by smi2710 at 11:14 AM 12-11-2009

Modified by smi2710 at 11:15 AM 12-11-2009


Modified by smi2710 at 11:18 AM 12-11-2009
 
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#29 ·
so i started doing this awesome job today and let me tell u it blows. Im at the point of getting the heater core out but the rebar is in the way. I drilled out the steering cloumn bolts and took out the torx on each side, am I missing something? (rebar only moved a hair with those bolts out) Do I need to remove the large black box to the right of the heater core box?
 
#33 ·
I'm in the process of doing this, and the 13mm bolts going into the firewall (pics 5 & 6) don't need to be removed. These connect the inner and outer firewalls to each other. And there's like 5 of them, not 3.
 
#35 ·
Have you taken out your dash? No they are not. All the bolts required to remove the dash are 10mm nuts. I didn't unbolt a single 13mm bolt pictured above, and I have the dash completely out of the car.
 
#36 ·
I just did mine this weekend. Works great now.

One thing that I have to say is you don't NEED to drill out the stearing column. I started but my drill broke and I didn't have another one. So I unbolted the rebar a both sides and just forced it back far enough on the passenger's side and changed out my heater core that way.

Drilling it out would've made it easier since I wouldn't have to fight it but this way works too.
 
#37 ·
Need help please. I've got the dash out and I've removed all the rebar bolts that I can locate. I have not removed the ignition sheer bolts because I read it was possible to replace the core without removing them. I can not figure out how to remove the A/C. Here's some pix to help with where I am at.

http://picasaweb.google.com/gleaminx/96GTIVR6#
 
#42 · (Edited)
If you are trying to remove the entire heater box, then you need to remove the shear bolts to unbolt the rebar from the steering column. I was able to get the heatercore, but I could not access the A/C evaporator (which also had a leak, and I removed) without doing so. The entire heaterbox has a plastic tab on the passenger side that slides into the rebar. I guess you could pull the passenger side of the rebar back far enough but I couldn't and I was afraid I'd bend and deform it. You can pull the heatercore side of the heaterbox off by unclipping the metal clips as outlined in the DIY, but it's a major PIA to get to the rear clips.

From looking at the pictures, you still need to remove the duct in front that directs the air into the dash vents. It's held on by two plastic 10mm nuts. This should give you more room to get the heater core portion of the heater box out.
 
#41 ·
the dash shell dosent need to be seperated from the rebar either.. you can swing the whole assembly from the passengers side. you just have to remember to disconnect the plugs that go to the twist lock terminal to the pass front door, and a ground (under pass kick panel) there was alot of over kill in that write up, but i am not going to bag on him. i did it the same way when i did my very first one. one more thing that might help, the break away bolts i use a die grinder and slot them and use a standard screw driver to remove them

hope this helps someone that has to endure this job for their first time
 
#43 ·
thanks everyone. i was able to replace the heater core without removing the steering wheel shear bolts. i found my error, the passenger rebar was still caught on the trim. i was able to yank it free and have PLENTY of room to do anything i want in the dash.

however, after all that and putting everything back together again, i still have no heat. the hoses look as if they are in the correct position. i really don't think they are backwards.

any thoughts?
 
#44 ·
Help

Great write up man, ive been using it to help with my heater core replacement.
But i cant seem to get the heater core out, dash is off, three fire wall screws are off rebar is loose and ive came across a few little metal clips holding the heater core onto a few other parts.
But i can only loosen it up. Are there more of these metal clips that im not finding? Perhaps behind the heater core by the fire wall?
 
#45 ·
Great write up.. I jus did mine this past weekend with a buddy. But we found it easier to just remove the whole steering column.. Once that was out of the way the rebar was easier to move out of the way to get to the heater box... But great job either way. :thumbup:
 
#50 ·
I know that I have to do this soon...prob before this winter. So I made a pdf of this so that I could print it out. It's much more printer friendly than through a web browser. Since I haven't jumped into this yet, I had no comments of my own to add, but I did throw a few other people's comments at the bottom and resized all the pics and install notes.

If you're in the same boat as me and don't want your laptop hanging out in the garage, pm me. I also made another pdf for this diy:
http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthre...placement-1996-Jetta-2.0L-ABA-engine-with-A-C
 
#51 ·
A helpful hint: when you get your new heater core, if it comes with the white plastic double sided nipple for the AC recirc flap tubing, super glue that sucker into the space it fits on heater core. I replaced my heater core, and when I was all finished putting everything back together, I was messing around under my hood I accidentally popped of the tubing on the firewall side. Guess what happened? The double sided nipple thingy attached to the tubing inside the dash area, fell into the dash area. I finally fixed it 6 months later when I was in a better mood to re-attach it. I was able to reach it by removing my gauge cluster and it took me over an hour to connect it.
 
#52 ·
I'm about done with this job (I've been working in stages) and thought I'd throw up a couple tips for those unfortunate souls who have to do this job and find this thread:

--My car's a '95 and I don't know if they changed the cruise control systems later on, but my car has a rubber vacuum diaphragm for the gas pedal that sits just to the left of the heater box. I unclipped the heater box and was wiggling it around and saw that a tab on the box was poking the rubber. To avoid ripping the rubber, I took off the mounting bolt and slid the diaphragm out of the way. And yes, the cruise still works on my car. :D

--I disconnected the steering column from the rack at the firewall, below the pedal cluster. 2 bolts, 10mm I think. It comes clean off. Just be careful to avoid turning the steering column while it's disconnected. With that, I was able to pull the rebar back and rotate it down at the passenger side (clockwise) to get plenty of room to pop the heater core out.

--Taking the front center console off should have been easy but I sat there scratching my head, trying to figure out how to remove it without taking either seat out. You'll see that it's boxed in by the seat bolsters on the side and the e-brake on the rear. Best bet is to remove the 2 bolts holding the e-brake down and slide the e-brake handle out of the way. This allows you to pull the front console back and up. Moral of the story, make sure you don't need the e-brake the hold the car while you're working.
 
#53 ·
Welp. I started at 1pm today and finished at 4pm. I was just about to take the dash off when my wife told me it's time to go out to her friend's for supper.

I'm going to continue the procedure at around 9am tomorrow after it warms up enough out there. I think there was one thing just holding the dash on when I let it.. something in the middle I forgot it would seem. After that, I need to get the rebar out of the way and pop the core in. It sounds easier than it is I'm sure :/

I love this car.. had this baby for over 10 years now. My 2008 Civic SI is going back on Nov 11 because its out of lease.. thank god.. I hated that car. So glad to be working on my gti vr6 to get her back on the road :) It's too damn cold without a heater core!

Thanks for the tips and this thread.. helps a ton.
 
#58 ·
Everything works great now! This job overall is very easy, just very time consuming.
Ha, I don't know if I'd go that far, but it was pretty straightforward, just a LOT of disassembly. I've certainly done other jobs that were much more difficult (removing the trans, for example). The worst part is that you keep on just taking crap off, wondering how you're ever going to get it all back together. Once you get the new core in, it's all downhill and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. :D

Why the hell do they even use shear bolts?
Designed to shear away in a crash and allow the steering column to collapse. Which it might not do if you replace them with hardened steel bolts. ;)
 
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