My heater core arrived, It's moisturizing the inside everytime I drive so I would like to replace it asap.
I couldn't find any diy or good information online regarding replacing heater core on s type.
Any tips or advice or diy links?
Not sure if I have to take apart the whole dash, or just remove the glove box assembly.

 

Just to make absolutely sure you don't have the electronic headlamp level adjusters, does your car have one of these close to the steering wheel? The upper round knob is a pop-out control for both headlight levels. The STR does headlight levels automatically.

 

I have headlight leveling sensors on the control arm, so probably I have the automatic self leveling headlights.
Also found headlight level fix kit on ebay.

 

So.. still seeking advice on replacing the heater core.. Do I need to remove the whole dash?
What's the quickest way to get to it?

 

Nothing in the workshop manual?

 

I actually don't have one accessible

 

Available as Windows EXE and as PDF. Just get one

 

Well today I got to tackle this heater core. Probably the least favorite part of this project.
I downloaded the shop manual, but the pictures were useless and the steps were very vague.
It wasn't very useful, the only useful information I got from the shop manual is that I needed to remove the throttle body for supercharged engines in order to get to the bolts holding the heater core box from firewall.

I figured this was a great time to clean off the molds and dry out the carpet and underneath.
First I removed the passenger seat.
Was lighter than I expected lol.


Very gross underneath. You can see some molds here and there from rain getting in there.
Only passenger side was damaged from water, so I think I'm going to take out the backseat and maybe peel whole passenger side carpet to dry em out and clean.

There were lots of unconnected and mysterious audio amplifiers and other audio devices everywhere underneath the dash.
Wasn't connected to anything, so I removed all of them. Not sure what they were doing. It was getting power from fuses though.

The dash is extreme pita to remove. Just about every interior piece needed to come off.

The dash wasn't even budging without removing the steering column. Even after removing the column it was difficult to move the dash.
Had to unbolt the driver seats and move it back in order to get the steering column rest on the floor. What a mess.

I'm not excited to put this back on.

I got the dash partially removed, and tada I can see the blower assembly and the heater core box.
The blower assembly was part of the heater core box, so had to remove that as well.
Soooooooooooooooooooooo much work just to get to the heater core box.

I didn't like it.

I unplugged rest of the wires and some weird additional stereo related wires, and the dash fully came off.

Got the heater core box out, The bad news is......
It didn't seem like it was leaking.
I was dumbfounded. I know what coolant smells like. Car was losing coolant, it smelled like strong coolant smell inside the car, and also everytime
I use a heater and then shut off the car, the whole inside gets fogged up.
I was so sure it was the heater core leak?
Since I have a new one, I'm going to replace it anyways.

Now this, is the AC evap core. The connector part was rusted severely on both terminals.
Judging how there was no freeon in the line when I unbolted them, I think this is the source of the leak.
Underneath there were lots of rust crumbles from this.

My question is, can a leaking AC evap core line cause the whole car to fog up?
Even though there is nothing left in the AC freeon lines?

I'm a bit bamboozled. I was expecting a hole in the heater core. Not this!!

I'm really not trying to spend another 5 hours to get new AC evap core from the parts car, so I just bought a new one from dealer.
It was more than I wanted to pay, let's just say that.

Saturday, I'm going to attempt put all this back in, get half the carpet out to dry them.
Then I'm going to replace all the coolant hoses (They were surprisingly expensive!!!!) and flush the cooling system.

 

Thank you for sharing the adventure. It is compelling watching

 

The lack of ac will cause fogging as the ac dries the air before it is drawn into the cabin.
Good luck with the re-assembly!

 

I'm amazed at the work so far!
Have you got the dash back in now? I hope it's all good.

 

You probably had the hose connection on the firewall to the heater leaking. It will run down the firewall and some will end up coming thru so you can smell it.

Generally unless the interior windows are fogging up I am reluctant to change the heater core because of what you found out!

Any chance you can pressure test the system as is? Maybe the core is bad and you can't see it or any staining??
.
.
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Yeah the interior windows were fogging up real bad, to the point dribbling water on to the dash.

I replaced both AC evap core and heater core, just to be safe, never wanna do this again haha!

And for sake of the next owner

 

Wanted to get the interior dash put in, but things dind't go well, and takes a lot more time putting stuff back together than I thought!!
Today, I got some work done on rear suspension, and got the AC evap core/ heater core box assembled and put back in.


This lateral link on rear suspension was really worn. It looks like it adjusts the rear toe of the car, so I guess you can call this rear tie rod as well.
The rear sway bar links were also toast so I ordered those too.
The rear control arm bushings are also worn pretty heavily (expected from a car with 400 hp..)
I looked at the price on rear control arms and they're pretty heafty.
I'm gonna either just replace the bushings only or get the control arms from my parts car, but that will be decided later.

The other side bushing was worse.

The removal looked pretty easy, just one bolt and two nuts... then...
This happened! Why??
Why couldn't they just put the bolt from the bottom
Just because of this I had to remove the ebrake assembly


I was so upset I took 2 pictures.

I got them out, lined them up to get the length matched, Going to get four wheel alignment after so it didn't matter much.

They're back in, the trick of getting these in was to have the inner side go in first, then put a rod in the bushing end to angle it so you can slide it into the spindle assembly.

Now to this, well I got the AC evap core, then I realized it didn't come with this weird box that it attaches to.

The bolt that was threaded onto this block was so corroded from AC freeon, as you can see I went hard at it for an hour and just ended up destroying the thread
I was really put down, because it seemed like it wasn't a part that I was able to get locally. I reallllllllly didn't want to take the dash apart on the parts car just to get this block.

Turned out!!! local O'reily had it in stock! They shipped it to me and it was only $39.
They surprise me every once in a while. Even dealership didn't know what part I was talking about.

Got the AC evap core/ heater core box fully assembled, was tricky to put it in because there was no fasteners holding these in place.

It's put back into the car. I sealed it with some silicone on the firewall so absolutely no moisture gets inside the car!!

Got the dashboard back in and bolted in, I got the steering column bolted back in also ( was reallly heavy and difficult!!) but forgot to take picture.
Didn't get any further because I broke some sort of plastic wire housing at the bottom of the shifter assembly and I had no super glue in hand, so called it a day.
I vacuumed the driver side because it's not wet, and it turned out pretty clean!
Also cleaned the dash and metal frame area underneath shifter assembly with some WD40 and now theyre shiny!

Tuesday my goal is to fix that shifter wire housing I snapped, put rest of the interior back except passenger seat.
I'm going to take rear seat out, take half the carpet folded up and shop vac all the water out.
Then I'm going to hold off on the jag for few weeks because I got some other works to do...


Because of the jaguar my client's car is sitting in my house garage XD

 

Thank you!, and no, it's so much work putting the whole dashboard back in.. :..(

 

My 2004 STR was the same - and I thought the same!

By careful measuring I was able to get the track/toe almost exactly right.

 

What a great thread!

 

So some updates.. Got the dashboard fully in and everything in engine bay put back together.


Dash is starting to look like an assembled piece. I lost a few screws, but just got those from parts car.


This rear vent was difficult to assemble it correctly to have the inner flap working correctly.
At this point all the interior lights started working and center console all started to work as well.

Put new Cabin filter, because the old one was.. well.. gross.

Now this, full of mold and dirts. Really gross and a lot worse than what this picture shows.
Also, this whole carpet was DRENCHED in water haha.

You can kinda see but it's just filled with water underneath. I later found out the source of the leak.
It is leaking from the passenger side (right) C pillar??
I can see the C pillar cover is damp, and the water dribbles drip down the seat and gets on to the carpet.
Must be the moonroof drain, pretty common issues on sedans. I'll take care of that later.

Vacuuming starts... I used my shop vac to drain water at the same time.
I would vacuum, and then step on carpet to get water back up, and vacuum again.. Did that for an hour.

After. A lot cleaner, Haven't bleached or soaped it yet, just vacuumed and looks a lot better already.

This is what came out of the carpet XD. Literally a gallon of water haha!


So, after I put all this back together, I needed to drive the car out of my shop to take care of few other cars.
Well, CAR WON'T START.
I have no idea why?
All I did was to take apart the dash( which is kinda lot of work lol) and throttle body..
I put everything back together and double checked, everything looks good.
Here is what's disconnected - both seats, passenger side seatbelt.. Not sure if they have to do with car starting.

This is only thing I broke entire work. This line sits underneath the shifter assembly and has wire in it. The plastic tab that holds the thing together snapped.
This has to do with car knowing which gear it is in, that was my initial thought.
What it turns out to be is--- You know how car won't shift out of park unless you step on the brake? Well the line allows you to put it out of park. So this wire tells shifter assembly that you are stepping on the brake pedal.
So this doesn't seem to be the issue..

I am so bamboozled, now the car is sitting outside and it's way too heavy for me to just push it back into my shop.. and it's raining etc..
I really need the car to start and I'm out of ideas!

I turn the key to cranking position, and literally nothing happens. Checked the starter relay and its fine.
Also car does seem to function properly elsewhere. Everything works, and when I crank the ignition tumbler all the center console dies (proper starting sequence)
Only thing I can think of is maybe some of the coolant got on to the starter while I was disconnecting the 3 lines that plugs into the heater core..?

This sucks, Starter was working perfectly fine before I took the dash apart..
Well, I guess here it comes..



:..(

 

Updates

I had a customer luckily bringing in a perfectly fine functioning STR for some suspension work,
compared to mine and realized the security lamp flashes rapidly when I try to start the car, which doesn't happen on customer's STR.

So I figured it had to do with immobilizer, probably I disconnected it while taking the dash apart. Remember I had to unplug few stuff from cluster or key ignition.

Cool seeing two of them. It was really nice example. Beige interior tho.


Towed my car to a shop nearby that had tools able to reset the immobilizer for jaguars this era.
Even dealerships couldn't do it. Called two of them and they told me to just bring it here

Shop told me they need two keys to program the immobilizer (not sure why, just a jaguar way, he says)
Then I found out literally nobody cuts these weird keys in my state. Even dealership would not.
Ended up just paying some horrendous amount of money to order new key through Jaguar.

Brought the key to the shop and they reset/programmed the immobilizer and according to the shop, it starts now!

Gonna go pick it up tmrw.

I can finally finish up the interior and take it to the alignment shop T.T

 

Sorry for the huge image, but yall need to check this out. Dealer was amazed that my old key was able to start and lock/unlock. Seems like someone just grind it down with an angle grinder or something haha~!