Both of yall are highjackers! This is my thread. haha


On a side note; last night began work on replacing my old heater core which I learned the hard way had failed and the heater hoses were looped... When I mean the hard way I mean driving without defrost at night with fogged up windows lol. Let me tell you what a pita it was to get the cover off inside the cab, had to take out the glove box just to reach most of the screws. Before I could even plug in the heater hoses it began to storm out so I had to call it quits.

On my agenda for tomorrow is to plug in the hoses, install my pres tone radiator flush kit, and flush everything out.

 

Shoot i coulda swore this was LGs thread! hahahaha

Sorry about the green.

Oh your truck looks wonderfully fantasticlly beautiful by the way!

 

I had the same problem with my truck.The previous owner tried himself too,but broke all the tabs that hold the inner ducting to the outer case.Getting to all the screws is a pain.I had a chance to get a whole new heater box for my truck,bit I passed it up.

That storm was great last night.The one we just had was too.But,thanks to my new tarp,the inside of the truck is completely dry!

 

Yup got interrupted once again. Our weather is so awful.

 

That sucks man.

It has been awful lately.Notice it never rains til the afternoon?

 

Man, you guys with AC, I don't want to hear any more of your whining and complaining
about getting to the heater core, OK? My 81 doesn't have AC and I recently had to fix a
leak in the core.... You have to remove the entire box from the firewall, which would be
easy enough to do EXCEPT FOR the brilliant engineers at Ford decided to use a NUT &
BOLT in the upper LH corner of that box, getting at that damn nut requires removing the
cowl and stickin' your arm + tool down a hole located approximately just underneath the
radio antenna:


There's an arrow pointing to the nut, it originates under the letter M in .COM at the top.

You then have to pull the entire assembly out of the truck and take it apart to extract the
core.

Of course, taking it apart means destroying another rusted-together nut & bolt assembly,
the double-shouldered stud depicted in the pic above (it's one of the studs that also
protrudes through the firewall and there's a nut on it inside the cab).

This is all in addition to the inside-the-cab stuff that needs to be done.

So, no more whining about how hard you guys have it, OK?

On a side note, I took the opportunity to replace all the dry-rotted foam rubber on the
flapper valves, I hope it works to keep more of the heat out of the cab in the summer.

 

I don't have A/C,and it wasn't much of a problem for me pulling out the whole box.How come that picture doesn't show the two bolts on the bottom of the heater box on the outside of the firewall?Those are the worst ones to get to.They were the hardest part due to the PS inner fender.

 

Heck, with A/C, the heater core is actually pretty easy to access by taking out the glovebox.......

 

I don't know, I don't even know in whose gallery that picture resides, I just came across it
here somewhere and looked it up in Caleb's 6-page heater core thread from a couple years
ago.

I don't remember what I did to get at the two you mentioned but I seem to recall using a
u-joint swivel-thing on a ratchet and it worked OK. A mirror on a stick helped me see under
there.

I melted the box (accidentally) by finally grinding that damn nut & stud off (actually, I cut
through it using an air-powered cut-off tool) and replaced it with stuff I got at a local
hardware store. It kinda irritates me that I couldn't use the same size nuts & bolts to hold
it all together but I'll get over it, I really dislike it when I go to replace, say, the shock
absorbers, and find somebody has used multiple sizes of nuts & bolts, means I have to
crawl out from under there and go find more tools, I hate that.

My heater core I found was leaking where one of the tubes meets with the tank, I hooked
it up to the air compressor and stuck it in a bucket of water to find that. So, I just cleaned
it all up and re-soldered the connections and it seems to be working, I hope it lasts.
Saves me about $100 on a new OEM heater core (after what I've read here, I don't trust
parts-store replacements).

I don't like removing the cowl because, of all things, the windshield wiper arms are a pain
in the *** to get off. I removed and took apart all the stuff inside so I could replace the
foam rubber on the flapper valve thingies; it wasn't strictly necessary to do that but, if I'm
gonna do it, I'll do it right....

 

Thats how i replaced mine!

Took only about 1/2 hour too!

 

Oh god please explain lol, you got me wondering if my parts store core was a good idea.

 

Heh.... People here have been complaining they begin leaking after a few years.

 

Poor quality in some brands......

 

We've got a place around here called Marietta Radiator Distributors | 501 Glover St. Marietta, Georgia 30060 | 770-428-5900, they specialize in radiators, a/c's, and anything to do with them. They also do special/custom work on them. Their prices aren't the cheapest, but they are reasonable, and they always do very good quality work. I've dealt with them from time to time and have always been very pleased with their quality and workmanship. I've mostly bought parts from them and they are always high quality parts. I can't recall ever hearing a negative comment on them.

 

Just been checking out your restoration project. Enjoying looking through in my boredom at work, haha. Looking forward to the continuation and completion!