dewey7015

i have been doing the CLR clean every year with this 2014 jku. PIA. so, I finally took an hour and cut the piece out, just like in original post. all went well. now when I get the $$, I can just swap out the heater core. I can vouch for the "everything functions as it should with the piece missing"
GREAT IDEA, ORIGINAL POST!! thank you!

huygens

Well hell, I just scheduled mine to go into the shop Monday as I saw no feedback on if this compromises the integrity of the dash long term. At this point I think I will stick with my apt, I really wanted to hear back from someone that completed the install and had it a few months to hear how it is holding up though. Hate biting this bullet, but really don't want to spend an entire weekend disassembling my dash or cutting it up to regret it 6 months later.

Thanks for the feedback.

dewey7015

I thought the same thing... one less bolt to hold the glovebox/trim on, but it really doesn't affect it..rhe hardest part was holding the trim out, while cutting the brace off. A bungie cord was the right call.

huygens

So, where there any other complications with removing the heater core itself or installing the new one?

Rednroll

I'm going to go this route to replace the heater to fix my heater problems. However, I'm assuming my HC likely looks similar as shown and before I cut into things, I'm going to try a power flush.



I've been trying to avoid the pain of replacing the heater core where I built a CLR power flush setup, hoping it will be able to clear out those clogs.

Here's what I put together. It will continuously circulate CLR through the heater core as well as heat up the CLR. Figuring hot circulating CLR will give me the best shot at clearing out any hard calcium deposits as shown above.



I currently have the setup running. I'll let you know how it works out.

Rednroll

So my power flush setup was working well. I raised the temp of the CLR up to about 90C (194F). It was running for about 6 hours and then the heater core sprung a leak.

It failed at the lower elbow as others have mentioned.

There was a hole in the tube of the lower elbow next to the HC as well the tube joint was leaking on the lower fitting where it attaches to the Heater core.


I decided to do B.Law's swap method but I additionally decided to repair and put the dash cage bracket back in place. Using 1/2in C-channel that I picked up from Home Depot and some 3/16in rivets. Here's what I came up with for the cage repair.

Mr.T

Like that C-channel repair. Looking forward to more info as the repair progresses...

Rednroll

Just finished riveting the cage all back together. It feels solid. Now to button it all back up, and hope my trim screws still line up with the bracket holes. I think they should line up because when I cut the cage piece out, I took the mounting bracket with it, where the OP cut the cage so the bracket was still attached. The 1/2in C-Channel fit perfectly inside of the cage bracket C-channel and I just happened to have a piece of it laying around from a precious project.

Here's how the cage repair looks. Hopefully, I won't have to replace the HC for awhile, but I should be able to just drill the 5 rivets that are holding the cut-out piece to the existing cage if I ever do.

3 cuts repaired

dewey7015

how hard was it to route the heater core tubes back through the firewall? I was going to cut the tubes like in the original post...

Rednroll

I cut the tubes as well. I wasn't able to pull the old tubes out to replace them. I tried but it wasn't happening since they're bent around the back of the dash and then through the fire wall. You can see that in my install pic below, there's just no room to be able to pull those tubes out without removing the dash. So it seems like the entire dash needs to come out to be able to replace the tubes. The cage was just blocking the view showing my tube cuts in the pic I posted above.

Here's the heater core install prior to the cage repair.


I also put loc-tite weld around the elbow joints where they attach to the heater core. This area seems like a common failure point, so I wanted to future protect against that.