So a bit back I bought this car at auction
The car runs and drives PERFECT, super tight suspension & steering, no play in anything, basically one of the better MK4 Jettas I’ve driven. My GF wants to keep this one and have me sell her blue 01 as this one rides so nice.
Anyways, a bit after I bought it I did some stuff to it and while driving it I noticed that I was getting the smell of coolant when I turned on the heat. Fucking great. So I had two options. Re-auction it and just get my money back or fix the problem and sell it knowing that the car is basically perfect. After much pussy aching and whining like a little bitch, I decided to do the heater core and sell the car to a person instead of re-auctioning the car.
For anyone who were smart enough to never get a VW, a heater core is a fairly common failure item in this brand. This car has under 82K miles and this is the third core in it! I had a beater Buick that I got with 80K and junked it with 225K and it was on the original core.
I’ve done heater cores in cars before, but that always had me removing any “unnecessary” items in the way with my Milwaulkee Sawzall, so this was going to be a first.
Here are some pics that will make most sane people cringe
Pile O’ parts
I don’t think this goes here
This is what the heater core “lives” in, the heater core box. You can see how there are dried remains of coolant
And here is the offending unit
What the fuck have I done???
And this is how it sits now
So, retarded designs I’ve worked on this week. Well, first there was the Volvo Cross Country that needed the throttle body cleaned out as it was searching for idle. The fucking IKEA reject designers at Volvo decided to put the throttle body under the intake manifold upsidedown so it is a blind shot that you basically have to feel. Fucking brilliant. Nothing like taking out the radiator fans, charge tubes, and 9 million other things to get to an upside down invisible throttle body.
And then there was this abortion. There were a few how to threads on-line and seeing the pics showing the same thing as the last two pics I posted up where what made me want to not do the job and re-auction it. But, in the end, I’m glad I did it as I can now sell the car and be 100% confident that there is NOTHING wrong with it mechanically and the body is straight and has a nice clean interior.
A [SIZE=7]HUGE [/SIZE]thank you goes out to Xander as he came over on his day off and helped me through this task having done it on his old Passat. I REALLY REALLY appreciate it man
So, would I do it again? Yeah, I would as I could not hand over the $800-$1000 a shop would charge for this job. It really wasn’t hard, just alot of stuff to remove to get to the heater core box that has 2 screws holding the core in-what a kick in the dick that is