Heater core

Mac wrote:

> Just checking to see if anyone has replaced a heater core out of a
> 1990 Miata or one around that year?? Mine is leaking and could use
> any pointers that I can get before I tear into it.
> Thanks in advance.

Horrible job because the dash has to come out. That's about all I can say.

There are at least two ways to do it. I recall one of them is to remove the
heater core from the driver's side (LH drive). You can do this by taking out
a couple of screws from the plastic cover and doing a little (if I remember
correctly) judicious cutting of one of the radiator tubes. One has a rubber
coupler that separates it from the firewall, one doesn't. Why? I dunno...go
figure. The core slips right out; it is held in place by a piece of foam to
keep it from rattling. As with pretty much all new cars, the water
circulates through this guy all the time; you cut off the heat by closing
flaps in the heater box that stops the flow of air. There are instructions
for this core removal technique on line someplace; I would have linked you
to them, but I couldn't find it in a quick search. I fully expect one of the
other posters here will provide this for you.

The other way of doing it (which is what I did) was to pull the dash and go
the whole 9 yards. I did this for another reason: the core burst and the
interior carpeting and padding were saturated with coolant. This gave me the
ability to take the entire shabang and clean it (with liberal amounts of
Simple Green and water) and allow it to dry in the sun for a couple of days.
If you are into cleaning things, this exposes the entire interior area as
well. As another poster noted: this is sort of a huge job. It's not
difficult though, but I would suggest another set of hands for taking the
dash out once you have removed the mounting hardware, etc. I also have a
copy of the service manual, which helped make the job a little more
comprehensible.

It is possible to cut the carpet in the area under the heater core and
remove it while leaving the dash intact. I decided to not do this; you may
decide otherwise.

Good luck with this.

Ken




"Mac" > wrote in message
news
> Just checking to see if anyone has replaced a heater core out of a
> 1990 Miata or one around that year?? Mine is leaking and could use
> any pointers that I can get before I tear into it.
> Thanks in advance.
>
> M