Mileage: 88,493
The heater box itself was a mess. It was covered in 31 years of dust and grime plus had residual coolant in it from when the heater core was leaking. After I spent a couple hours scrubbing and cleaning the heater box, it was time for reassembly!
I purchased the new heater core from O’Reilly Auto Parts for $25.99. It slipped right in without any problems. I used some high temperature, high density foam pipe insulation I got from Home Depot to duplicate the deteriorated foam on both the inlet and outlet tubes of the heater core seen HERE. As I continued with the reassembly, I replaced all the foam gaskets and seals with self adhesive foam insulation strips I also purchased from Home Depot. The last thing to get replaced was the brittle red vacuum line sticking out from the top of the heater box seen HERE. After about an hour of reassembly and refurbishing, I had the heater box back together and ready to be put back in the car!
Since I was very close to getting the heater box and heater core back in the car, I need to evaluate the heater hoses. They both had to be cut off the heater core since they were original and very brittle. After cutting the ends, there was not enough length to reconnect them. Since I had everything out and apart anyway, it made total sense to just replace the hoses too! I went with the regular standard black heater hose that I purchased from O’Reilly Auto Parts. To be totally factory correct, you would need to find heater hose that had three small grooves running the length of the hose. Not many vendors carry this hose (Ames Performance Engineering does!) and they usually charge about $5 a foot for it (you need two, four foot lengths to do both hoses!). My total cost for the heater hoses was a little over $10!
Since I still wanted/needed to flush and fill the coolant in the Trans Am, I decided to reinstall the heater box and new heater core and just not hook up the heater hoses. I didn’t want any of the crud that was possibly in the coolant system to get stuck in the new heater core and ruin it, so we would just bypass it when we do the flush and fill. The installation went about the same as the removal, a lot of rotating, pushing, and pulling and it slipped right in! I reinstalled all the bolts and nuts that hold the heater box to the firewall, hooked up the vacuum lines, and hooked up the temperature control linkage. It was nice being on the road to getting the car back together!
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