How do you Change rear evaporator core in 2000 gran caravan?

Answer 1

It is the most painful process in the world, short of replacing the front evaporator, which requires pulling the entire dash.

Start by removing all the back seats so you have plenty of room. You'll need to get the rear fascia off that covers up the inside of the back liftgate hinge, then start working on the passenger side plastic panel that covers up that whole side of the van. The door sill trim for the sliding passenger door has to come off two. The seatbelt for the back seat has to come undone from the roof support and both have to come undone from the floor support. After about a million screws you'll get that out of the way.

Next you crawl under the van and there are three or four bolts that surround the A/C refrigerant lines that go up and into the van. If you have refrigerant in the system, get it evacuated properly, please. Clean off the block well, because it'll be covered in road crap that you don't want to get into the lines when you disconnect it. Undo the refrigerant lines and those four bolts.

Now you can go back in the van and clamp the heater hoses off and disconnect them from the heater core, undo the electrical connections to the fan and the actuator doors, and remove the bolts with large washers that hold that whole blackbox assembly to the van. Those bolts only thread through metal clips so be sure they don't fall where you can't reach them and do not lose them.

Now you should be able to pull the whole rear HVAC assembly out as a whole and put it somewhere you can work on it. the blower fan has to come off and it's held on by 5 bolts I believe. Then the icky tar crap comes off the rear expansion valve block and you can undo that... and finally take the 4 or 5 bolts off that hold that pesky evaporator core lid off, and pull the sucker out. Be careful not to damage any of that styrofoam or it won't sit back in there right.

For the love of everything, replace the expansion valve and all the O-rings while you're in there because you never want to tear that down again. Make entirely sure you plug all the electrical connectors in so you don't have to spend two hours undoing a bunch of trim again for that.

There are many different sized bolts/screws used to assemble this so try you best to be organized and keep everything together. Make sure that the seatbelts are reattached properly and that the bolts are in tight.

Best of luck. Helps a lot to have a buddy around.