It's been a few months since I posted! Other things in life came up and I didn't have much time to work on the old girl. Plus, the weather was nasty around here for a while - it's since warmed up considerably - open-garage-door weather is a boon!
Lots of posts coming in the next couple of days, as I catch up on all the work I've done on the car in the past couple of weeks.
Let's start with the driver's side heater box. You may recall, faithful readers, that these bits are made from pressed cardboard, and that the single surviving (to use the term loosely) heater box on my 220S was hanging on by a thread. Well, no longer. It is officially toast. :D
A couple of shots of the coolant hose, coming off the bottom of the heat exchanger and connecting to the engine.
Got the hose off the engine - that connector looks kinda iffy. Hopefully it's just residue from the hose that will clean off easily.
A couple of shots of the jury-rigged piece connecting the front of the heater box to the vent coming from the front of the car. Normally this is a solid rubber hose - at some point in the distant past (no idea when), this piece must have crapped out, and was replaced with a piece of sheet metal, bent into a cylindrical shape, clamped down on both ends, the seam on the top was taped over, and it was spray-painted black. Sigh. It breaks the heart!
Once that piece of sheet metal was removed, I could get a look at the blower fan - this piece looks like it's in good shape.
Seeing as the pressed cardboard of the heater box was already shot - and that I have replacement plastic/brass reproductions already on the shelf - I figured "what the hell" and just tore this chunk of the heater box clean off. Sometimes it's fun to destroy!
To completely remove the blower fan and the attached remnants of the heater box, I have to detach some wires. The two wires from the blower fan attach to the two mounts on the end - all three mounts are used by the wires going down and to the right. These wires snake back toward the dashboard. There's a fourth wire out of this pile that attaches to that piece on the far right of the photo - I'm unsure at this point what that is. A ground? The piece itself seems to be firmly attached to the body.
The blower fan and bits are now out.
Here's the same mount and a similar ground attachment that's on the passenger side, where that whole ventilation assembly has been out of the car for many years. The bolt on the left side appears to hve been attached from the inside of the wheelwell by a clip of some sort - the back of the bolt was round (not hex, not square) - odd! And that clip had detached, so the bolt ws spinning freely. Took a bit to get a good grip on this round head to hold it steady while my neighbor Frank got the nut off from the engine compartment side.
Here's the two wire mounts, easily removed by unscrewing a pair of screws (seen loose). Into a baggie they go!
Next was the fun bit of detaching the vent cables. One on the top valve, two on the side controlling the two flaps. First it was a matter of getting the bolts off the squared mounts, to hold the cable sheaths steady - the bolt on the top cable is removed in this photo, the one below had yet to be removed.
It took a bit to finally be able to see that the cables are held on by small C-shaped clips, that just pop off if you get the proper angle and leverage with a flathead screwdriver.
The heat exchanger itself, plus attached remnants, then came away easily. More carnage!
The last bit will be getting the mount screws off the back end of the heater box. Here, the two big Phillips head screws on the very back are out. There's another on the inside side, and then another bolt that comes in from below. Currently, there's a piece (in the passenger area) in the way of getting at this second bolt, and the first bolt is in danger of being stripped - I'm hitting it now and again with penetrant before I give it another shot.
Death of a heater box! I know that there are going to be some purists out there who cry and curse my name for this outrage... "But it could have been SAVED! It could have been refurbished!" Maybe, but I doubt it - the cardboard was in such horrid shape that just looking at it funny made it disintegrate more.
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