Stuck on heater core replacement

[bbig119]

Got the heater core in and car functionally finally after another day or problems/issues-- this time with coolant flush and change to BMW blue.

To keep along story short, I and two other people tried their damnedest to get the aluminum bracket for the pair of pipes on the left(driver side) of the heater coreto lock in place, but I suppose we just couldn't wiggle/apply enough pressure to get them fully seated to allow the bracket to clear the the elevated portion of the tab on the heater core(see above) and lock the pipes in place. I ended up using a dremel to put an angle on it and that got it close enough that we were able to get bolt it in. Changing the pipes had absolutely no positive effect on the problems I had except taking a long time in twisted contorted position to get old ones out and new ones in through the firewall.

Yesterday during the coolant flush(even though the system is "self bleeding") I was running into over heating issues, so I decided to use the old funnel on the expansion tank to aid the bleeding. It spewed like a volcano several times throwing DI water or coolant all over the engine bay which in turn got into the wells by the ignition coils, in turn causing the car to misfire-- which made further bleeding difficult. After several unsuccessful attempt at drying the coils we realized that a bunch of coolant was actually in the well of the spark plug and when the coils were put on it must have pushed it up enough to short the connection to the plug. I ended up sucking up the coolant/water with paper towel wrapped on a long screw driver.

Car seems to run fine how. Microfilter changed(not as bad a job as I thought, but definitely more of a pain in the ass than something like it should be). Resistor pack changed, and appears to have solved the blower problems, but I haven't run AC too much yet. Heater core changed, and blowing hot air(which gets VERY hot at high rpm when on fully hot-- kinda makes sense). This morning the expansion tank was empty, so I topped it off. I guess I'll have to do that a couple times.

I have a bunch of pictures from the job(heater core stuff), so if anyone wants to see them or could use a few pointers I'll be happy to help.

In the end...definitely a pain in the ass job that I hope I never ever have to do again. That said-- I think I saved at least $1000, so even though I killed a weekend on it, and the better part of a monday with the coolant flushing problems, I came out on top.

Thanks to everyone who helped posted procedures, gave some advise on previous threads, or helped me with my problems this time around-- I couldn't have done this without the forum.

[saconnect]

You clearly have no clue how to do this repair. JT540i and I spent several house just messing around with the damn pipes. They are extreamly hard to get through.

I would do everything possible before messing around with new pipes.

I do appologize sincerly if I've mislead you in any way, I was just tryin to assist...I have done four of these without a hitch, and three of them I've put on the pipes that came with the heater core, and I've never run into this problem. I'm getting ready to do my 94 soon, so I'll probibly run into it there...

[Eric Clark]

The indy I use said the heater core is his second least favorite repair on the E34. The first being something that is behind the heater core but I forget what it is. To get to it the heater core and its entire housing has to be removed. I think I read some where that shogun said the record for a heater core replacement is 4 hours. I'd like to meet this guy because mine took 12 hours but next time I will not remove the damn pipes so I can get it done in one day.