How much time will replacing a heater core add to a bare blend door repair?

(in my 03 alh 5spd wagon)
Im no longer shooting foam, and can hear the blend door clanging as i switch from hot to cold so im pretty certain my lack of heat is because of the blend door being bare, but i havent had the vehicle for a winter before so im unsure how strong the heater core is. Ive read a couple DIY posts for the blend door repair on here and i keep seeing comments saying its wise to replace the heater core as well once youre inside the dash to HVAC and re-foam the blend door.

My question is: How much time does this add to the job? Any suggestions are genuinely appreciated. Looking forward to having heat outweighs looking forward to doing this repair lol

If you are taking the HVAC case out, the heater core labor difference is about 30 seconds.

You just really are talking about the price of the core itself. Unfortunately, even a new HVAC case, while it DOES come with a new evaporator core and expansion valve, it does NOT come with a new heater core.

If you are going to repair the doors, then it does not make any difference. I generally just put a new case in, as the labor costs involved in taking one apart, coming up with a method to refoam the doors, then putting it all back together, would exceed the cost of a new case.

But if it is your own time, then it may be cost effective to repair it.

The job is not that bad. Lots of stuff, lots of screws, etc. but none of it is especially difficult, just tedious.

yeah its going to be me and a friend doing it over the weekend. he's a diesel mechanic for an american car company that shall remain nameless, so i figure letting him get a crack at the dashboard cant be too too bad of an idea. my mechanic recommended to just replace the whole assembly, but then again he gets paid the same either way so of course he'd recommend the road of less labor. my friend just charges a 30 pack on the other hand, and he doesnt mind sharing the profits.

when i said hvac i meant taping the blend door and then applying foam, although replacing the whole assembly unit did cross my mind before seeing the $350 pricetag

It is all in what you can or will want to spend, money or time.

Our shop is $119/hr. So, the R&R of the case is the same. BUT, once out, the time it takes to recondition it could be a couple billable hours, plus some materials. So suddenly, that $350 for a NEW one does not seem so bad in contrast to repairing the old one for ~$250. Especially when you get a brand new evaporator core and expansion valve along with it.

yeah, so any idea on whats the added time if i replace the heater core while im in there? not necessarilly trying to save money, as im not looking for the cheapest fix, just the smartest. keeping the job "in-house" is to save money, but mainly its so i know the job is done right and im not beong gouged for something unnecesary

Zeus if you do recondition, make sure the doors seal good....

I did this for the first time over the Holidays and I covered the doors with aluminum duct tape and it works pretty good but does not have a complete seal when the doors are shut. It works much better than before but not as good as it could be... super cold temps outside and jr gets decent heat but not as good as it could be. It is too big of a job to go halfway on a little part of it.

My wife's 05 heater core just starting leaking... joy. This time I'll do it the right way.

HeyZeusBC said:

yeah, so any idea on whats the added time if i replace the heater core while im in there?

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Already answered, see post #2.

Cant you hack up the door without doing the entire dash? Does not seem to make sense to take apart the entire dash if the heater core is not gone. Just get in there through the motor hole and put tape on it like everyone else.

Prairie Chicken said:

Zeus if you do recondition, make sure the doors seal good....

I did this for the first time over the Holidays and I covered the doors with aluminum duct tape and it works pretty good but does not have a complete seal when the doors are shut. It works much better than before but not as good as it could be... super cold temps outside and jr gets decent heat but not as good as it could be. It is too big of a job to go halfway on a little part of it.

My wife's 05 heater core just starting leaking... joy. This time I'll do it the right way.

Click to expand...

I did the same thing with aluminum tape and also have fair heat.
This, of course , after full heater core replacement is a drag. Live and learn
Good luck on your wife's car.

not too hard to split the case, clean things up and "reupholster" the blend and zone doors... when i did my beetle years ago i used interior vinyl on the swiss cheese steel ...but as per your question, the heater core slips right out the top once you've removed half a million screws, clips, plastic parts, drain the coolant, evacuated AC and unhooked all the lines cables Etc

If one is confident that they can repair the blend door then do it. However, one would feel really bad if after doing all this work that things didn't work right: there have been many folks who have went with cheap heater cores only to find them failing in a matter of months.

This is a BIG job. Can't say I've done every job possible on these cars, but a heater core replacement is one job that I have to seriously consider whether I'd ever do again.

If it's a lot of labor, of a safety issue, don't go cheap on parts.

Dash pulling is probably one of the bigger jobs on these cars, I agree. But to be honest, these cars are in general pretty easy to work on.

I've done much worse jobs. And some that looked bad (if you walked in on me in the middle of it) but were not all that bad to do.

In recent memory, something I would never want to do again: shifter cables on a first gen manual gearbox Saturn Vue. The HVAC case is in the way of the hole they pass through in the firewall. The time allotment does not allow for dash removal and HVAC case removal, so you have to either take it all apart and lose major time, but make it easy, or fight and curse getting the cables routed and through the hole. Then continue to curse all of creation and William "Crappo" Durant's memory and his mother's memory when you cannot get the grommet back in place. Seriously, I can count on one hand how many jobs had me looking at my wit's end, and that was one of them.

I've often wondered: If you had a car that received a steady diet of G12 all its life, and were pulling the HVAC box out to redo the foam, is it worth putting a new heater core in? Is a new part going to be better than an original factory part in this case?

-J

Well I am pretty sure my Golf never had anything but G12 in it, and its heater core went before the foam did (although it had been blowing bits out for a year prior). I put a new OEM core in, from Volkswagen. It was a Valeo.

Check this out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR6DYOJ3B34

MichaelB said:

Check this out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR6DYOJ3B34

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That almost deserves a sticky!
Wonder what he charges for that job......I hate pulling a HVAC box out.

maxmoo said:

That almost deserves a sticky!
Wonder what he charges for that job......I hate pulling a HVAC box out.

Click to expand...

He doesn't operate an independent shop. He worked for years at a VW dealership and now makes his money on YouTube (good luck). But yeah if you go through all the work to pull the box out of the dash you may as well replace the heater core. Who would want it to fail/or leak after all that work? If I were to go through all that work I would replace the evaporator core too.

MichaelB said:

Check this out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR6DYOJ3B34

Click to expand...

im hoping to avoid taking as much out as possible. any videos going through the back of the radio?

MichaelB said:

He doesn't operate an independent shop. He worked for years at a VW dealership and now makes his money on YouTube (good luck). But yeah if you go through all the work to pull the box out of the dash you may as well replace the heater core. Who would want it to fail/or leak after all that work? If I were to go through all that work I would replace the evaporator core too.

Click to expand...

thats how i feel about it, IF i cant solve the problem without fully removing the dash.

HeyZeusBC said:

thats how i feel about it, IF i cant solve the problem without fully removing the dash.

Click to expand...

I really don't know. He sez in the beginning that there is a shorter method to accomplish this if his readers would leave a comment on that. I have no dog in this fight as I have a 2014 Passat and had the dealer replace the heater core under warranty I subscribe to Humble Mechanic and this issue that you were asking about popped up this morning, so I thought I would post it. Maybe other members here can better explain to you how to repair the foam on the blend doors without removing the dash. It is a known problem another one of VW failures I guess.

HeyZeusBC said:

im hoping to avoid taking as much out as possible. any videos going through the back of the radio?

Click to expand...

When it gets warmer and the plastics aren't so brittle I'm planning on using the behind the radio method to recover my doors. I Found this DIY on the Vortex...

http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?5984439-Mk4-blend-door-foam-repair-diy

I think there might be some video links in the thread as well. It looks pretty simple with the hardest part getting the black cover off the air box without breaking the clips.

the blend door was absolitely clean of foam, youd never know it had ever had any on it by the looks of it. cleaned and taped it up, the heat cranks now, all in all it took me three hours and i was not in a hurry at all. no reason to dig any deeper, for now

Excellent work!