Ahhh, the VW heatercore. It's like a mini radiator that is in your dash where hot coolant from the engine flows in and gives you heat when it's cold outside. When it cracks, as is known to happen in MK3 VW's, it pisses coolant and steam all over the interior of the car. Some say that replacing a heatercore is quite possibly the hardest thing one can do in a VW. Some say that it takes hours upon hours of wrench time (hence the cost of upwards to a grand in labor to fix).

I wholeheartedly agree.



Above is a representative diagram of a Volkswagen GTI and it's AC/Heat system. The running joke in VW circles is that all of the german engineers got together one afternoon, chanted some magic spell that lifted the heatercore in mid-air and then built a Volkswagen around it. Totally true.

Anyways, I'm done. I just spent close to 5 hours between two days replacing mine. And I had it easy because my dash was already out of the car. I have close to a dozen cuts on my right arm and a handful of extra screws but the car steers, stops and drives and that's all I'm concerned with. Plus they are just screws and everyone knows that extra screws aren't that bad, it's the bolts you have to worry about.

I'll never do that job again so help me god.

This entry was posted by JKREW, on Saturday, August 11, 2007. You can leave your response.