The Dreaded Heater Core

This one has a lot of photos because this part was one of the main deterrents when purchasing the car: the infamous heater core. The heater core in these old Audi Coupes is notoriously difficult to get to. The dash, center console, and airbag systems must come out including nearly all of the interior components north of the front seats. What made this one million times worse was the car was sold to me where someone had attempted this before and failed, leaving a trail of stripped bolts on the way. I spent days, literal days, cutting through two bolts in a spot I could not see into with a jigsaw blade… BY HAND. Two millimeters of movement at a time I would saw elbow deep into the dash. Unless I wanted to pull the engine, which I really did not, this was the only way. Once the heater core box and all of the tubing were out I went ahead and rebuilt them. I took out all of the old foam where I deemed it unnecessary and replaced it with a few layers of thick aluminum ducting tape. Once the box pieces were individually rebuilt, they were assembled into the clean-looking box in the early images above. Then I ran into more problems, torn vacuum actuators (shown above), finding a way to mount with stripped bolts/studs from the previous repair, and the new replacement core not having the same angle of tubing as before. Not knowing when I would be able to ever get a new, and of course no longer available, heater core I just would modify my firewall to work with this one. One thick rubber firewall gasket later, some aluminum-rubber sound deadening, and a great deal of force later it fit.