240Z: Heater core removal & VIN Tag plate holes

One task of the body shop team is to clean the heater cores and pressure-test them (for leaks). So it was about time to remove them from my two heater modules. As you can see, the first one was quite rusty, and what you cant’t see is that that big middle plastic piece was molten in some areas, for whatever reason.

There is plenty of surface rust inside, but nothing that can’t be fixed with a bit of sandblasting and some fresh layers of paint. Those springs and mechanical parts will be a bit more tricky to replace, but I’m sure there is a solution.

Luckily, I have some parts replated already, which will definitely be helpful to restore this thing.

Completely disassembled. With plenty of rust and dirt who fell out of the box:

While at it, I thought I better take apart the second one too, which was visually in much better condition (except that tacky wiring job).

All controls, wires, and plastic pieces removed:

I was struggling to remove one of the hoses, and it needed replacement anyway, so I took out my trusty garden-hose cutter (from a gardening project). Ah, sometimes it’s nice to have all those special tools on hand 😛

After all the screws were off, I was finally able to remove the second heater core.

The second box was indeed in much better condition. the yellow zinc parts are corroded, but still visibly yellow. And It had all the original stickers, quality stamps and part number stamps on it:

I’m not an expert when it comes to these things, there is corrosion and parts of the paint peeled off when I vacuum-cleaned the dirt of the heater cores, but otherwise They were much better than what I expected. I hope a professional wash will make them look shiny again.

During some recent work, I realized that the first body shop has accidentally closed two of the VIN-tag plate holes. But instead left a new one. So it was time to get those missing holes back in:

Here we go: Yes, one screw was missing (new ones are ordered) and the plate itself needs to be redone, as one corner broke off when I removed it years ago, and then I want to have a nice and shiny one anyway. Luckily, good replicas are available, and all you have to do is to stamp back the numbers. I also double-checked if the engine is still an original “Matching numbers” engine, and yes indeed, I still have the correct engine for this chassis. Which is great 🙂