Originally Posted by
motretu
i'm feeling stupid about removing the heater core from my '96 f250. have read most of the posts saying this is an easy job, i also have read the shop manual which agrees in general with what has been said in the posts here. but here's my problem: i have the glove box out. i also have a black box piece of electronics removed. i have the 7 or so bolts on the plastic heater core box cover removed and the cover is free. but the cover is blocked from sliding up or down or towards the rear of the cab (out of the glove box openiing) by a bar that is part of the dash just under the glove box. the bar does not appear to come out separate from the entire dash assembly. what am i missing?
problem solved.
after the 7 bolts are removed from the plastic cover, the trick to getting the cover out is to move it as far as possible towards the rear of the cab, then towards the RH side a bit and then down, and it comes right out. i hate to say it, but it took a total of four frustrated attempts (reading posts here and the shop manual before each attempt), spaced over a 3 week period, before the secret was revealed on the fifth attempt. once i had the cover out of the way, i was able to get the core out of its box by pushing on its pipes from the engine side of the firewall.. once out of the box, it was a bit of a struggle getting the core (mostly its pipes) clear of the box enough to lower the core below the dash and out. required a bit of pulling and bending of one of the mounting ears that holds the black box that sits between the glove box and heater box (the black box, of course, has to be removed before one can get to the heater box cover). installing the replacement core ($23 pep boys, plus $4 for some double back foam tape to hold the large rectangular gasket in place) also required bending the same mounting ear a bit, but otherwise the rest of the install was easy (probably should never use that word). the whole project is probably an hours worth of real work once the tricks are known.