'73 Heater Installation

I finally put my heater back in last night. I thought I might share some advice for anybody doing the same. . .

I bought the Moss seal (363-135) which is made out of what feels like tire rubber; very stiff. I would hightly recommennd cutting away the area which covers the control cable clamp! I now have my heater in, and I'm contemplating taking the whole thing out again because it's virtually impossible to reinstall the air control cable. I'm going to attempt to cut away the offending portion of the seal through the interior vent in the passenger footwell, but that may prove too difficult.

As for actually installing the heater in the first place, I found that pushing down from the front of car (standing over the nose as opposed to either side) was the only way to get it in. Once the bottom of the heater box cleared the opening near the firewall, pushing straight forward drove it home. I wish I would have done that from the get go; instead I scratched up a lot of paint and slightly deformed the top of it persuading it with a rubber mallet. Now I know that for next time. ;)

I hope anybody doing a heater reinstall finds this helpful.

Kyle

Kyle, I had to do some cutting too, I think installing the heaters was one of the most difficult things to do under the hood on the restoration project. I had to heat up the rubber and oil it too. But, I have not attempted to put the cable back yet, hope it can be done, because the heater isn’t coming back out.

Kyle,
I just got done pulling my heater, painting it and reinstalling it. The air control cable seems like it should be a big pain, but mine seemed to go in with little problem. I just used a needle nose pliers to thread the cable in, then just tightened up the bolts. My problem now is that I think the cable has too sharp of a bend in it, and the control knob doesn't want to turn very easily.

Trent

Ya'll ever try to install the cable at the same time as the heater? Disconnect the cable from the control, slip a piece of small PVC hose over the sheath all the way to the heater, pull the heater out and pull the PVC hose out just enough so that you and reinsert the cable back in when you reinstall the heater. When the heater is back in place and bolted down, reattatch the cable to the control. Never done it this way but will be trying shortly. Comments?

Well Gerry, all I can say is good luck. I did try doing it with the cable with no luck. It was all I could do to get it in period, let me know if you do get as you are describing. Would probably make life easer in the end if your way works.

Okay, seal problem solved. I was able to stab through it with a Buck knife. I think that reconnecting the control cables is equally, if not more difficult than installing the heater.

As far as connecting the cable in advance, it would probably be much easier. My only concern would be the high potential of bending or crimping the cable in the process.

I am curious as hell about how they put these in at Abingdon in any sort of timely fashion. . . If only some old employees read this board. . .

Kyle

I'll bet they went in before the engine & bonnet were installed. It'd probably be way easier if you could just stand in the engine bay...

I had no problems with the seal when I did Jerri's '70 Gt...I use the vacuum line trick: attach a piece of vacuum line over the cable...push the vacuum line through the opening in the dash....set the hater box in place as you alternately pull on the vacuum line from inside car....as the heater box drops in place the cable kinda pops through the dash so you can grab it & pull down to attach to heater control (after you've removed the vacuum line, of course)

I didn't have much trouble putting the heater back in my 73. I attached the cable first. I eased the box back in while my MG guy guided the cable back through. We did notch the opening where the cable went to keep it from crimping. I later decided to pull the cable back out to re-route it to make it go to the control correctly. The cable can be hooked up through the passenger side heater vent. Four screws, it's off and you can work through the hole. It's tight but can be done.

I don't remember how I did mine, but it didn't seem like a tough job. It does seem like, however, I still had the dash out and the interior gutted when I did it. During a rebuild I always mull things over for quite a while before making a move. It helps, I've yet to cover one job with another that I had to undo or that caused me trouble in later steps.

Everything I've had to re-do was because someone else didn't do the preceding task correctly. It drives me buggy knowing something isn't right. Not done at all, I can live with that. Broke, I can live with that too. Done half-assed because someone was too lazy to do it right, I can't have it.