How do you change heater core in a 76 Ford Granada?

Answer 1

Not sure how old this question is but I figured I would pass on any info I have. I just replaced the heater core in my 78 Granada yesterday...it was a BEAR of a job but in all, took about 5 hours.

First thing to do is remove the bolts from the dashboard. There is on screw on the drivers side defrost vent and one screw on the passenger side defrost vent. Once these are removed you then need to remove the bolts under the lip of the dash. I started on the passenger side and moved along the dash to the driver's side removing the bolts.

Once these have removed you can lift and pull out the top of the dash. Next you will need to remove the mounting bolts.

Now that the top of the dash is of you will be able to see two large mounting bolts for the dash. Thre is one on the far right passenger side and one on the far left driver's side. Start by removing these bolts. There are more mounting bolts to remove but I removed the glove box next. Open the glove box and remove all of the mounting screws. The glovebox should slide right out.

Next I continued removing the dashboard mounting bolts. There is one at the bottom of the pasenger side dash. Just follow the lines of the dashboard down toward the floorboard and you will see it.

There is another bolt at the bottom of the dash at about the middle. You can only see it if you are looking up at it from the floorboard (You'll need to contort yourself a little bit for this whole process:-) The last mounting bolt is the one at the bottom of left of the driver's side.

At this point I removed the two screws from the speaker mount in the top center of the dash. You should now be able to lift the dash up and pull it toward you. To make sure you get the most "play" in the dash you will also want to remove the vent control on the passenger side. There are two screws holding the vent handle in place simple remove these two screws and let the handle hang down.

Now that the dash is lose you need to remove the plastic air duct from the passenger side. There are 2 screws holding this in place. One at the top and one at the bottom. Once these screws are removed you can pull the duct out through the glove box opening. Once the duct is our you can look through the glove box opening and see the blower for your heater. The blower is enclosed in a plastic housing that is roughly 2 - 3 feet long. THis plastic housing is the entire heating unit. Inside this plastic housing is your heater core. To remove this plastic housing you have to remove 3 nuts from the inside of the engine compartment.

Looking into the engine compartment you will see 3 brass looking screws and bolts sticking through the firewall. THere are two toward the top of the engine compartment and one lower in the middle. Remove all three nuts.

Next you'll need to remove the hoses from the heater core. These hoses can easily be seen when looking at the top of the firewall on the passenger side of the engine compartment.

Once the nuts and hoses are removed you can get back in the passenger side of the car and pull the heater unit from the firewall. The easiest way to remove the heating unit is to first remove the air ducts that point the heat toward your feet. This is found attached to the bottom of the heating unit. There are 2 clams and one screw to remove from this duct. You an pop the clams out with a flat head screw driver and then reach the bolt with a socket extension. Once this piece is removed it is fairly easy to slide the heat unit out.

I simply pulled the heating unit away from the firewall. Rotated the unit a bit and then pulled it out the passenger side of the car from under the dashboard. You should be able to lift the dash high enough to give you room to slide the heating unit out.

Once the heating unit is out you will see the intake/output tubes for your heater core sticking through the housing. There is a plate holding the heater core inside the heater unit. Simply remove the 4 bolts from the plate, remove the plate and slide out the faulty heater core.

Once you place the new heater core back in the unit and secure the plate the real fun begins...reassembling everything.

I would recommend finding a system of separating your bolts/screws so you know where they go when you begin the reassembling process.

Hope this helps!