When you do it yourself, you can definitely save money. But before I take on any project, I try to determine whether it is 1) something I know how to do/fix and 2) whether I really want to do it.

In this case it was  a broken heater core in Cassie’s car (her 1989 Oldsmobile). I knew how to fix it because the exact same thing had happened to my Buick years ago. She was driving around and noticed a huge leak coming from under the car. It was green, so she knew it was an antifreeze leak but not much more than that. At first I thought it was just an overflow issue, but when I saw that it was pretty much completely depleted of coolant I knew it was the heater core.

A heater core is important because it takes hot coolant from the engine and circulates it in the passenger cabin, so your heater has hot air. In the summer this isn’t quite as big of an issue but in Colorado’s extreme winters, life without a heater core would not be pleasant -at all. Also having this leak was draining the engine coolant which could have totally destroyed the engine. So, it was important to get it fixed.

Taking the dash out

I knew how to do it, but it still sucked because I had to completely take the underside of the dash out. With my Buick I had to take the dash out as well, but it’s always a little complicated when you don’t do something very often. Why car makers require you to completely remove the dash in order to get at this core is beyond me. Seems like a better engineering solution could be found. In fact in my 75 Corvette, you can change it from the engine side of the firewall. Much easier.

In the process

At least I had most of the tools necessary and the parts store still carries the part for a 23 year old car in a discontinued brand (Olds).

My tools

After I removed the bottom dash and console, I had to get under the car to install the new heater core. It turned out the old heater core had plastic tubes that had broken and that’s what had spilled the antifreeze. The new heater core I bought had metal tubes that are much less likely to break and spill.

Old core with plastic parts versus the new metal version

The total cost of parts was $40 to fix it. It took me about 4-5 hours to scout for parts, take apart the whole dash, install the new heater core and put all back together.  I called a shop just to see what I had saved and they quoted me at $500. So that made me feel pretty good. My time was worth about $100 an hour! It also made me realize how outrageously high the mechanics charge.

I don’t always try and fix things myself, but sometimes it makes you feel good to know I can and the money in my pocket can pay for a ticket to Puerto Rico and back.

Under the car